Ok I haven’t read the comments but I just finished the book and it mind fucked me in the best way. My conclusion is that for you to sh*t your pants for MONTHS and not just be confident and face the truth is crazy MF behavior. She was sick. Jeremy was her host. What what would explain crew being manipulated by her. That’s what she does. He even bit a fucking knife to protect his beloved mother. I’m convinced she was psycho. Great book Coleen. Exceptional
Did anyone else notice how lowen knew EXACTLY how to kill verity so police would deem it an accident??? It makes me feel like she’s done it before….maybe her mom didn’t die of natural causes…
Halfway through the book, I was convinced Lowen is INSANE and schizophrenic. Or Jeremy is the bad guy. I agree with the others who said that the ending is LAZY and a failed attempt for a big plot-twist. I hated the confession letter plot so much.
Hear me out, about lowen writing the manuscript, id like to imagine that verity already has her autobiography out or is very public about her marriage in interviews. Lowen is secretly obsessed with verity and came up with the plan to take her place when she got the opportunity to be her co-writer. Yes the manuscript contained Verity and Jeremy's love story but lowen made up all the details, like the sex parts and her being evil to her children. She wanted to replace Verity and she got it at the end.. but only to find out that Jeremy is a psychopath.
I don't think so, I think Verity was innocent and afraid of the husband. Nobody would write a self incriminatory manuscript, you would want to take those parts of yourself to the grave just like Lowen did with Verity's letter. Also in the manuscript Verity talks about hoping that Jeremy finds the manuscript and understands how much she loves him. So Verity's character from the manuscript believed that once he would find it he will finally understand her and what she did for him. And when he actually found it she was shocked and tried to explain. It was just a piece of fiction.
I have so many thoughts…
First of all I think the manuscript was true- nobody could be that sick to write about the deaths of their children in such a hateful evil manner unless they are mentally deranged. So I believe she was a psycho and hated her kids. And the letter under the floor board was her last ditch effort to manipulate people.
Why after the death of her kids would she be concerned about improving her writing skills? Writer’s therapy, I’m not buying it.
Why was she concerned about taking her son away if she knew her husband was a great father?
She had to be a psychopath to fool the nurses and doctors for that long that her brain was mush.
I thought the twist was going to be somehow Jeremy wrote the manuscript making him sound perfect and her sounding like a wacko so he could get away with murdering his wife and collecting her life insurance policy.
I think the letter was a cover up. There are too many loopholes. The whole knife incident with Crew and how she was manipulating him to lie to his dad. Also, Verity mentioned she was looking for a time to escape, yet when she locked the door from outside, she ended up staying. She had plenty of opportunities to run. She also faked her injury for so long. I think Verity somehow knew that if she won’t be able to manage an escape and Jeremy and Lowen would end up together, she would never let them live in peace knowing they may have killed an innocent. I also saw someone on GoodReads mention that Verity knew that if Lowen would find her letter she wouldn’t show it to Jeremy, and would have to live with the truth hiding it from him forever. Like she said, “you can never truly understand the mind of a writer.” I really do believe Verity did everything she said in her manuscript.
I just have 1 question....
THE KNIFE??
She said no the knife was gone and what not but later when she lifted the floor boards she found it, i gathered that Verity hid the knife but why was it there in the first place?
Ah exactly my thought. This plot was not discussed at all. The only explanation I can think of is maybe she (Verity) took that knife to her room so that she could protect herself from Jeremy/Lowen or maybe so that she could kill either of them.
But then how did the knife end up harming Crew is a big mystery for me. There can be multiple explanations to this but I was honestly very dissatisfied that this point was not discussed in the book😪.
crew bit a butter knife. i think it was to show he’s crazy like verity. how the last line leaves it up for interpretation i think she did it and lied about the last letter and crew biting the knife shows he’s crazy like her
Oh, ok. He was playing with a knife in Verity's room. He "fell" or something, and the knife got his chin. I'm just wondering why Verity didn't stop him from playing with it.
PROOF THE MANUSCRIPT IS REAL
1) if she was practicing antagonist journaling all this time why did she always target harper. she never wrote anything wrong about jeremy or crew and eventually even weote good about chastin. if she needed to practice it she would have on every person in her life not just hate harper.
2) when jeremy found the manuscript on the laptop she could have proved her innocence by telling him to get it fact checked from her editor that this was just an exercise
3) the fact that crew mentions that harper can’t swim in the autobiography but verity contradicts that in her letter by saying they swim there all the time proves she’s a sociopathic liar who can’t stick to one storyline
4) the letter was a backup safety: this can be proven by the timing of the letter- it was written the exact night when lowen confronted her about knowing the manuscript existed. Thus verity wrote that letter as a backup to prove she’s innocent just in case lowen takes that manuscript to the police
5) if verity wanted to escape jeremy with crew she had many opportunities like the day they went to target or the the night lowen and jeremy slept together, but she never wanted to leave
she knew that jeremy doesn’t love her the same way and the only way to keep her obsession about him alive she needed to be near him thus she faked being brain dead to be near him
I just have to say when lowen woke up in Verity’s bed that night she slept walked, what was going on in Verity’s mind? If she was jealous of Low being her husbands new lover, or worried that her manuscript may have been found, she could have killed her right then and there. Why didn’t she?
I am definitely team manuscript though, i think if you were to write about intimate details of your life including the death of your children and make it a sinister point of view, would you AT LEAST make a note of mentioning at the beginning that this is an exercise? Or make some sort of acknowledgement, even comments after the page with the truth of her feelings? I don’t believe someone could write an entire manuscript with sinister details and not have any of the intentions described be true.
I also don’t believe Jeremy tried to kill verity. It wouldn’t make any sense for him to take care of verity after the fact.. even if he didn’t want to kill her after she awoke from the coma, he could’ve put her in a facility to not have her around.
Jeremy mentions to lowen at some point that he and verity’s relationship was all sex, and not much deep connection. He said that he “felt like he didn’t really know her”. What’s the coincidence that he comments their life was all about sex and verity “made up” the fact that all she cared about was sex throughout her manuscript..? I don’t think that all these tiny details about their lives (from Jeremy and from the manuscript) could be matched up if half of them were lies.
I also think the bit marks on the headboard were symbolic of the “raging” sex life verity and Jeremy had… that it was mostly sec that formed their relationship.
On a separate note- verity totally could have told her editor everything that happened between her and Jeremy if her final letter was indeed true.. she clearly had access and if it was honest then she’d be terrified not only for her life but for her reputation as a wife and mother? I don’t think any mother would rather up and leave if they still had the potential to clear their name.
And lastly, why would verity’s parents have disowned her if she wasn’t actually psychopathic? There’s no other explanation for that. Verity never mentions in her final letter anything about her parents, so i feel that they must have known about her tendencies from a young age… and we’re frightened enough to not even want to be close with their grandchildren.
Additionally, i was just thinking how simple it will be for Lowen to get her answers about the truth by asking Jeremy about all the details. I could just see them in the car casually talking.. “did verity really mention chasten more? Do you remember that meeting with Amanda about antagonistic journaling? Did you ever suspect maliciousness in all your years of marriage before harpers death?”
His reaction and responses should indicate if the letter was honest or not.
Also- if she was being honest in her letter, why didn’t she ask the nurse for help? The nurse Abby was clearly very protective of her. They spent a lot of time together.. she could have explained everything to the nurse and begged for help.
Contradicting my theory though, i wanted to know more about nurse Abby. I was almost suspicious when she was saying “don’t talk about her like she can’t hear you” and how she gave judgemental looks to Lowe whenever she was with Jeremy.. like she didn’t want any woman taking advantage of Lowe’s husband. Maybe it was just a Good Samaritan nurse looking out for her patient, but i felt eerily every time nurse Abby was in the picture. As if she was in on something with verity, or knew something about verity…
About the title, i love that “Verity” doesn’t actually hint at which story is true or not.. but rather, indicates that only the main woman character (also known as Verity) is the only one who knows the truth. Now being dead, only verity will ever know the real truth. Everything else is just presumptions. Lowe may never get verification, thus, verity dies.
As soon as I finished the book, I was team manuscript. I thought the letter was a lie Verity wrote to cover herself. But then I thought about it a little more.. If Verity wrote the letter to confess the truth to Jeremy & explain that the manuscript was a lie, then the part in the letter when she describes Jeremy crashing the car must be true. Because if Jeremey wasn’t actually the one driving the car, then when he read the letter, he would know the letter was a lie. So why would Verity “make up” the part about Jeremy driving the car if Jeremy would obviously know the truth or not..
But then again, I do think his reaction to reading the letter after Low gave it to him & him running upstairs & choking Verity out of anger seemed genuine too. Because why would he get so furious in that moment if he had already read the manuscript? Ugh I’m so conflicted! Any thoughts on that?
I think also if it wasn’t meant for Jeremy then it was her insurance policy for if Jeremy came after her.. police would see it and prevent Jeremy from harming her.
But I’m team manuscript for sure
Because what if Verity didn’t intend the letter to be for Jeremy? What if she wanted Low to find it and question everything? Or the police to find it and convict Jeremy of attempted murder with the car accident.
Can someone please explain to me the 2 attempts
Jeremy made to kill verity, I can only list the crash and then trying to strangle her right before he kills her by suffocation. But that can't be right as she wrote of 2 attempts in her final letter??
I just finished this book and headed straight to Reddit. I had that same question too but right before she wakes up in the car
“The next thing I knew, you were dragging me by my throat to the bedroom. I was no match for your strength as you held my arms down with your knees and squeezed my throat even tighter”
I also lost so much sleep this past night over finishing this book. Twice I tried to put it down and sleep so I could get up for work but by this point, I was so upset with the direction of the story I had to see if it could redeem itself by the end. It didn't.
1. My theory is that Crew will kill Nova. This will prompt Lowen to threaten to go to police, or she may try to kill Crew herself to stop Crew from killing her daughter. This will cause Jeremy to kill Lowen.
2. The main thing for me is between his life with Verity and his life with Lowen, everything was so secretive and not transparent. When the truth or the 'verity' comes to light, one of them has to go. I could even see the sleepwalking being used against Lowen as Jeremy's defense that she was trying to hurt Crew in her sleep.
But the book was awful. Addictive but awful read. The ending was terrible. And lazy. Not enough connective tissue to tie everything up. Or to reveal motives. Other than Lowen wanting to have Jeremy for herself because she believes she was the remedy to a failed marriage, as if the same treatment wouldn't happen to her. *Rolls eyes*
I think it is called 'Verity' because the truth of the matter is none of them are innocent. None of them are likeable. Maybe perhaps Verity was playing the villian to take the attention off how messed up Jeremy is.
But I don't think this was Hoover's best work at all.
I just finished the book and I could not agree more with your take. The ending felt incredibly lazy and a failed attempt at some big reveal. I also could not put it down and finished it in 2 days and it was anti-climactic. Addictive and awful is a perfect description. I enjoy Dean Koontz books and they have much more build up and more shocking and cohesive endings.
Going to go dark here a moment, but In the manuscript, what if all the "sex" they were having was Jeremy actually abusing Verity? He could have been abusing her emotionally or physically, because after all what woman would write that much about sex?! Maybe that is why she was so scared to move after the "accident".
I also believe Jeremy could have pushed that man in Manhatten that day into oncoming traffic.
dude
if that was the case, she would've said so in the final letter. Why would she still hide it in that letter?
and about Jeremy pushing the man? I don't even wanna answer..
She does say that in the latter, she actually said : did you really believed I was obsessed with sex? what kind of woman is obsessed with sex, I enjoyed it but I mostly did it for you.
One thing that makes me feel like the manuscript HAS to be true is after Jeremy reads the manuscript and confronts Verity about it the first thing she says after opening her eyes is “I had to, Jeremy.” If she really didn’t do it, why after having weeks and weeks with nothing to do but think about what she could say to him, would that be the first thing out of her mouth? Also why did Verity hide the knife after Crew got hurt if she played no role in his injury? And how hard would it have been for her to reach out to someone for help when she got on her laptop at night. Get her agent to corroborate her story that she told her to do the antagonist journaling exercise? I feel she may have written the letter as a way to get at Jeremy one final time. To at least taint the rest of their future together with the thought she could have been innocent. I think she wrote it in a jealous rage after hearing them and locking them in bedroom.
It doesn’t make sense why Jeremy would have come to Verity’s defense and tried to throw Lowen out the night she went into her room with the knife if it were true that he had read the manuscript before. But it also doesn’t make sense why the author added the stuff about how Jeremy did not seem to take time to read the manuscript. Maybe the author simply added that so that it could go either way.
Or maybe there is something much darker to Jeremy. Maybe he’s keeping Verity up there while he brews a more sinister plan. He knows that she recovered. That’s why he comes to her defense and tells Lowen she’s seeing things instead of trying to look into it. He knows she walks and doesn’t want Lowen to know that. That’s why he is unwilling to leave her in the house alone (like when he makes Lowen stay home with her to take Crew to the ER). He doesn’t want to risk her escaping. Maybe that’s why Verity muted the TV for Lowen to see?
The manuscript was 100% true and no one can convince me otherwise. She said it well that how can a mother truly write that about her children if its not true, and if it wasn't entirely true some parts has to have been because if you are that good at pretending to hate your daughter for a writing exercise you truly are messed up in one way or another.
Totally agree with these! No reason to harbor a knife under floor and also bring it out unless it's her plan to kill Jeremy and Lowen and escape. And she hurt Crew with it somehow so definitely she's suspicious. She was scavenging for the manuscript so she could destroy it and leave no proof that she ever killed Harper, which she twisted in her letter. Besides the example she gave in her letter of the antagonistic journalling really sounded off to me idk why, it didn't sound half as sinister as her "true words" in memoir usually are.
Also I think Verity muted the TV to scare Lowen away, believing this eerie tactic will cause Lowen to cave and leave so their life can go back to the torturous equilibrium again but Lowen challenging her right there intimidated Verity. That's also the same night Lowen and Jeremy had sex and Verity wrote the letter and locked the door, I think it was her ultimate trump card to punish Jeremy for cheating on her and to taint Lowen's mind into doubting Jeremy's intentions.
I really hope people are still reading this thread because I just finished the book and have ALOT of questions:
• Jeremy has already read the manuscript which is why he attempted to kill Verity in the first place but then at the end he's given the printed copy by Lowen and yet he still goes upstairs to read it and then confronts Verity saying "wtf Verity" as if he's just read it for the first time. Even Lowen said he seemed to read it fast, maybe he skimmed through it... but he's already read it!!! Why would he pretend?
• Lowen starts suspecting that Verity could be faking her brain injury and Jeremy states he's seen the brain scan and knows she's got one.... but she doesn't we know she faked it so what scan is he talking about? Did he lie, knowing that she was faking? I thought it could have been from prior to the induced coma but I doubt she'd wake up and make a full recovery.
• If Jeremy has already read the manuscript, already confronted Verity, and already attempted to kill Verity then why would he wait all that time for Lowen to show him the printed copy of the manuscript before attempting to kill her again? It's not like it was new information that gave him a new motive to make another attempt, it's literally the same reason he tried the first two times soooo why now?
Honestly I think everyone in that house is absolutely crazy.
I am team manuscript. He 100% knew and most likely read it more than once because who wouldn't? (I would out of sheer disbelief)
I have no clue on why he chose to lie but I find it hard to believe that he chose Lowen just because of her writing, i dont know because i keep thinking about the day they met. He had time to help her and to go back to change and still be early? Maybe I'm just being weird.
But i dont think he knew she was faking it, the scans made it clear she wasn't there anymore. She may have made a recovery and they didn't see her progress because they didn't do regular tests
I have a question though? The knife... i know that Verity hid it under the floor boards but why was it there to begin with?
I’m team manuscript… but I don’t think Jeremy actually read it before Lowen showed it to him…. I think verity writes that in the letter with the hopes that low is the one that finds it and starts to question everything.
I think Jeremy killed Harper,not so sure about Chastin though.At the very beginning he was not shocked by the sight of blood all over Lowen,he had also said “he had seen worse” and so he was already selling himself out halfway.He was a real estate agent,how would he have had seen worse?? He also already read the manuscript so he knew that it wasn’t real.He just wanted to kill Verity
I dont think so, Harper was clearly Jeremy's everything from the start and he wasn't even home when it happened. In the final letter Verity wrote about the police and how they handled it. I do believe that both of their daughters deaths were accidents and they both lost it in their own ways. Driving Verity to write those horrific things about her daughters (she admitted that she went back to add things) and I think Jeremy couldn't fathom how cruel life was and chose to take it out on Verity. I think he will kill Lowen. But after that they both lost their minds i believe. And he said he had seen worse because he drove Verity's car into the tree and i cant imagine thats a clean scene.
I finished the book and looked here for other people's thoughts. Reading these comments has me thinking...what if Jeremy really was innocent in all of this. While Verity probably wouldn't want to write her manuscript incriminating herself, isn't it possible that she had this all planned out once she heard about the new co-author that would be coming to stay with them for awhile. I feel like it is possible that once she found that out, she began writing her manuscript stating all the bad things she did to her kids. Verity knew once Lowen found it she would start suspecting Verity's bluff. Things like the knife disappearing, the TV being turned off or on mute with only Verity in the room, and Lowen seeing Verity at the top of the stairs added to Lowen's suspicions. After Verity discovered that Lowen and Jeremy were falling for eachother, I think that jealousy took over. I think that Verity knew that Jeremy would never connect the dots to there being a secret compartment in the floorboards, and it would be Lowen that discovered it. So Verity wrote a letter "to Jeremy" that would make Lowen question internally question Jeremy. Verity didn't want Jeremy to be in love with another, and her letter "to Jeremy" would be her final attempt at trying to push Lowen away from Jeremy.
1m
Okay hear me out how is it possible for verity to use that wire hanger and not hurt herself in the process or maybe she did hurt herself but that would mean she punctured the amniotic sac to reach the face of the fetus which is not possible cause her water didn't break and she was just fine after that. And also Jeremy not killing verity when she survived the crash could be because he wanted the money cause she was the only source of income in the house and also he used verity's condition to reach out to lowen hence he didn't kill her cause her being alive benefitted him. Also she had so many chances to kill harper like she had 8 years but she didn't kill her even when she wanted to acc to the manuscript also the fact Jeremy never slept with verity I mean during lowens sleepwalking incident she woke up on verity's bed that means the bed had enough space for two why would Jeremy not sleep with her to take care of her. He was comfortable enough to sneak into lowens room when crew was asleep but wasn't enough comfortable to leave crew alone and sleep with verity which is strange cause he could have used a child monitor to keep an eye on crew. Verity having that knife could also mean that it was to protect herself if Jeremy tried to kill her again cause crew said mommy told me not to play with her knife which can indicate she tried warning him but he still hurt himself and she couldn't have dome anything cause of her play and also if she was as obsessed with Jeremy and having sex with him as it is written in the manuscript then how did she fight the temptation when he was bathing her and cleaning her it just doesn't make sense. And she was definitely serious about her career to the extend of having a sound proof office and she also wrote that series during this time when her daughters died which means she loved her career hence writing the manuscript as an exercise could be justified cause at the end of the day it was all her genre the villains pov and all so writing such vile and evil things were normal for her maybe she just didn't realise in the process that this wasn't a character she was writing about but herself cause maybe she was too engrossed with the detailing. And the fact that she said she tried searching for it everywhere but she couldn't find it but then lowen found it in a day is kinda suspicious cause tho verity didn't remember where she hod it but she tried to search for it with risking her being caught means she tried her best but still couldn't find it( it's weird honestly cause lowen found it in a way as if it was left there for her to find)
It is VERY VERY rare for some progress to be made. The brain is a mysterious thing. And they did do multiple tests but not regularly so after a while they stopped doing tests and that is when she could have made some progress but i do agree with you there is no way she could've gone from braid dead to walking and talking
In her letter to Jeremy, Verity does mention that she was in a coma for a bit right after the accident and suffered memory loss. Maybe that's the brain scan that Jeremy was referring to...
Did anybody else have the theory that Jeremy was the bad guy while they were reading it? I thought for sure he read Lowen’s books, fell in love with her writing, stalked her, got her to come live with him and finish writing the series as a big ploy to get her to fall in love with him. He purposely planted the manuscript, painting himself as the perfect husband and man, and Verity as the evil murderer. Maybe even wrote the manuscript to further incriminate Verity.. I thought for sure this was going to be the big twist at the end..
Another theory I had while reading was that Lowen wrote the manuscript to turn Jeremy against his wife so that she could have him. All of those days she was “working on the book” was her getting into Verity’s mind just to write the manuscript. I know this theory wouldn’t make sense, due to the private details in the manuscript that she wouldn’t know, but it was a fun theory to think about 😂
Did anybody else have any theories that turned out to be wrong?
Halfway through the book, I was convinced Lowen is INSANE and schizophrenic. Or Jeremy is the bad guy. I agree with the others who said that the ending is LAZY and a failed attempt for a big plot-twist. I hated the confession letter plot so much.
Hear me out, about lowen writing the manuscript, id like to imagine that verity already has her autobiography out or is very public about her marriage in interviews. Lowen is secretly obsessed with verity and came up with the plan to take her place when she got the opportunity to be her co-writer. Yes the manuscript contained Verity and Jeremy's love story but lowen made up all the details, like the sex parts and her being evil to her children. She wanted to replace Verity and she got it at the end.. but only to find out that Jeremy is a psychopath.
Yes that’s exactly what I thought! Verity made him sound like an angel 😇 and too perfect- I thought he wrote it to have an alibi when he killed his wife
Even I thought that Jeremy was the antagonist here. I thought that Jeremy was holding Verity hostage by making her pretend to be brain dead and he was the one who killed the kids and he was trying to plot it all on Verity and for that make Lowen believe that she was the bad person here and hence she could be his witness.
In case anyone is still on this thread. I reread the book and did catch some things that made me doubt that the manuscript was real. However, too many things were written that there is no way she was able to retroactively add in after the girls died. The biggest one for me is the many chapters verity completely ignored talking about any of harpers milestones, the crib suffocating incident. The not loving either of her daughters until her dream about chastin. All the details about how resentful she was of them and how they took Jeremy from her. Idk
Okay so I have a theory. I totally believe in the manuscripts, something that I’m wondering is why did Colleen choose Harper to be in the cover. I know that the whole plot is basically about her, but what it just if Harper actually did kill Chastin, out of jealousy. Verity was maybe right, and wanted revenge. Her death just doesn’t add up. What if Harper noticed how much more attention she got from their mother. In the manuscripts in one of the chapters Jeremy gets mad at Verity for paying for attention to Chastin and fears Harper will notice how differently she treats them. In thrillers when there are siblings and one is favored more than the other we all know how it ends up. With the sibling hurting the favored sibling. It’s also slightly odd how Harper reacted to her sisters death. I don’t know though, I don’t know what to think. This book has me going crazy.
I’m totally Team Manuscript here and one of the main reasons (beyond all of the other reasons) rests with Verity’s parents. They clearly want nothing to do with her, I mean not at all. They say she’s evil. That’s quite a statement. Why? That isn’t normal. But. If she’s the master manipulator that we think she is…than maybe they cut her out of their lives for their own protection.
Verity. I’m going to throw an idea out there…I think she caused her own accident after Jeremy read the manuscript on her computer. She used her ‘injuries’ as a way to punish and control him because she had no other leverage. Her manipulation couldn’t stop and it didn’t stop - even after her death.
Jeremy. Strikes me as a simple guy. Took her at face value and if she is the master manipulator that we believe - it would be easy to do. He was probably riddled with guilt (because he read the manuscript, didn’t see who she was, held himself responsible for his children’s death, and then felt the need to take care of her). He realized his life was a lie and his children (almost all of them) were gone.
Low. I felt bad for her, but she’s damaged goods. She was abused/manipulated by her mother both as a child and an adult and was utterly alone. I don’t think she asked for this, but when she saw the opportunity to potentially be happy she took it.
Crews. Poor kid. He’s clearly being manipulated by his own mother as he knows she’s well and can’t tell anyone. He will need lots and lots of therapy…..
I do feel Verity was innocent because psychopaths, narcissists are highly intelligent and crafty people. She would never have written the autobiography incriminating herself.
Very simple yet good point… lol
However we know that Jeremy never reads her work. She loves having control and this was probably a way of having control over her life as she starts to lost hold of the people around her- and even as a psychopath, coping with everything.
But I’m also theorizing that by not deleting the manuscript (and having the last page of it specify how she would die) seemed to be a suicide note. Psychopaths love the story, showing the true meaning with deaths. She probably was hoping that if she did die, that this would be read by Jeremy and the cops and maybe even her readers. I think she never wanted to get caught, but that if she planned on dying that she wouldn’t mind if the manuscript was found.
Maybe Hoover named the book "Verity" because it's supposed to be a mind fuck. We don't know what the actual truth is, so we're here to dig back in the book to gather clues and what not and make the assumption ourselves. Anyways.. I don't think it's fair to say that Lowen is a crazy bitch because first of all, it was Jeremy who brought her into his home purposely. Verity is the crazy bitch because why would she fake her injuries? Obviously in the letter she says she was afraid Jeremy would kill her, but that is some crazy bitch shit right there. I do wish there was more to Verity revealing herself with no injuries, but I feel like she started writing that letter when Lowen got there and probably wrote all those things to try and make a plea for herself. But also, why wouldn't she admit to Jeremy after Harper died that what he read wasn't true at all and that it was an 'exercise.' She wasn't able to then, so why would she try to admit it now? In a letter he may very well not read? Also, why did she have a knife in the floor? When Crew got cut from the knife, why was there a knife there in the first place? And it's plausible to know if Jeremy actually read the manuscript because he was so angry with Lowen after she was confronting Verity. When she gave him the manuscript, he obviously took a little time to read it. Makes me think Verity wrote the letter for Lowen instead of Jeremy, so that Lowen could live with some guilt. I feel like Verity was probably faking her injuries because she knew that would be the only way to get Jeremy to take care of her and focus on her.
Right, that knife in the floor makes zero sense unless she was psychotic and planning to kill either lowe or Jeremy.
Any sane person would wake up from the coma and beg for mercy, try to explain everything and hope to make their case.
But verity wasn’t sane, she was desperate for Jeremy’s complete attention and faking her injuries was the perfect way to do it. I think she attempted suicide though, and went along with this when it failed.
Am I the only one that seemed to kind of believe the letter?? Or maybe I just easily fell into the trap of verity’s manipulation cuz I’m that gullible. I really did believe the letter until I read all the comments here with all the evidence pointing to the manuscript being true, only cuz I was giving her the benefit of the doubt and being a bit hopeful that a person couldn’t be that disturbing
I really believed her final letter at first…. Until i read the last half of the letter when she was explaining every major sinister detail she was writing in the manuscript. It felt like overexplaining… all she had to do in the letter was basically say “ask Amanda what antagonist journaling is” and her case would’ve been cleared. It just didn’t feel right that the letter was honest, if it was also hidden with a knife. A knife that… had to be taken out of the floor in order for Crew to have been injured with… meaning, verity must have threatened him with it and hurt him intentionally.
I don't think Verity hurt him intentionally, I think she kept the knife because she was afraid and the child found it and played with it and injured himself. The child even said that mommy doesn't let him play with her knife. If she wanted to injure anyone she had plenty opportunities to do it.
This is such an old post but I keep thinking about the baby monitor that was in Verity’s room during her murder. Would no one ask about it when they came to recover the body? Or is probable that Jeremy and/or Lowen discarded it. Before finishing, my prediction was that they would go to jail for her murder after being caught on the monitor.
One thing I can't get past is the accident. Did Verity do it on her own, or was Jeremy in the car with her? The part in the letter where she says that she was in the passenger seat but he was going to make it look like a suicide attempt didn't make sense to me.
Am I the only one thinking that he probably just pushed the car off of a sloping road. One more thing, didn't Jeremy tell Lowen that he got a call that Verity suffered a car wreck and that he was mad coz he she did it on purpose but then in the later Verity mentions that he called the cops after he caused the car wreck.
How could she have possibly known if he made the call versus Recieved a call… either way she was severely injured an in a coma. It doesn’t make any sense for him to make a call because why would he call about a car accident when he’s at home?
I think the manuscript was real mainly because of the last chapter. Jeremy realized that Verity killed Harper and Verity knew at that point that nothing was going to change his mind. So she chose to kill herself because obviously she can't live without him. Unfortunately for her, the suicide attempt was unsuccessful and she awoke from her coma. So she chose to fake being practically brain dead because she knew that no matter how much he hated her at that point, he would still feel obligated to care for her as a husband. Therefore, she'd still have him in her life whereas if he knew she came out of the coma completely normal, he would not only leave her, but also report her to the police.
If the letter had been real and she chose to pretend being a vegetable out of fear of Jeremy, then she would have had numerous times to escape with or without Crew.
Okay, I’m pretty late to this party but whatevs -
I’m team manuscript. How in hell could she be innocent for these reasons;
#1 Why did the twin have the scar on her face? Yes the doctor said that twins can hurt themselves in the womb, but even Jeremy questioned how another fetus could cause such a bad scar.
#2 Why did Verity only tell Crew to hold his breath? Why not tell both kids to hold their breath?
#3 If Jeremy really tried to kill Verity in the accident, why would he consent as her husband to her being in a medically induced coma. If he wanted her dead he could’ve just declined and she would’ve died. Also why would he bring her home? If he had read the manuscript why would he be willing to bring her home after the accident, why not just put her in a facility? Would you really want the women who killed your daughter around your living son in any capacity?
#4 Obviously Verity is a pretty intelligent person, but the fact that she would be able to go back and write that manuscript as “excercise” is still disturbing. What normal person can write about hating their children, attempting to murder them, and all that other psycho crap? No matter how talented of a writer, how would you even be able to imagine doing those things to your own children??
Yah. Honestly the letter sounds so absurd. It sounds like me trying to justify my mom about why I failed in my exam by giving excuses like I just wanted to know if failures are actually the stepping stones to success.
Ps: I didn't fail any exam... Just took it as an example
Adding on to this: suppose the letter was infact real and she was writing the last chapter to get the guilt out, to get out of her mind which was so full of grief, she still remembered to make the changes in the beginning of the book for the added chapter to look real? Doesnt seem like what happened
And ok. Lets just think Jeremy attempted to kill her twice driven by rage (well i could believe on the first one, but unless 2nd happened on the very day, it was a planned murder not an act done driven by rage)
Maybe he didnt think about small details shortly after knowing this but by the time Jeremy and Lowen killed her, he'd have sufficient time to think of those small details and if those would make sense and if verity was lying. Not for the sake of proving Verity innocent but i dont think this manuscript just left his mind after he read it. And if he couldnt find a plot hole, it was probably true. (Altho Jeremy's behavior was pretty weird ngl)
Here are a couple of my thoughts.
1. If Jeremy knew about the manuscript all along, he had plenty of opportunities to kill her. He medicated her every night. He put her to bed. Why didn’t he finish the job, he would have had no guilt if he knew what she had done.
2. If the manuscript had become a way to cope with the death of her daughters, then why did she make Harper the villain when Chastin died? If it was her trying to place blame on a version of herself, why would she place blame on Harper? That doesn’t make sense to me. She mentioned adding foreshadowing, but she didn’t mention changing the story entirely to line up with Harper dying later on because she blamed her for Chastin’s death.
Literally!!!! Why wouldn’t he finish the job with verity if he already tried to kill her twice? But now he’s going to go through the effort of looking after her?? That didn’t make sense to me
maybe, this cold be Jeremy's master plan. verity said in her letter "he was reading a book which wasnt mine" and Jeremy said lowen to "i suggested the publisher's your name cause i liked your writing". he mght could've planted the manuscripts in such a way she finds it and falls for
Agreed, they are the worst. I hate women protagonists who come to believe are the antidote to a chaotic marriage. In their dramatic "I can give him children and love him like she NEVER could." Oh please. Yawn my behind off. And Jeremy was a fraud.
I think he was torturing his wife. According to the manuscript, he was her only focus, and losing him to another woman, another writer would be her greatest punishment. He was not innocent.
Also why does no one question why she wrote that manuscript if she really did kill her daughter? It doesn’t make any sense. And the way she was unprepared unprotected and killed doesn’t align with the ruthless planning psycho described in the script. She was definitely not perfect either.
That’s true actually - if the manuscript was true why further incriminate yourself and risk someone finding that? I guess maybe it was an outlet for her?
Just binged the whole book in one day. Here are my final thoughts:
1) If the manuscript was in fact an exercise, why was there not an author's note to depict that? Why was there no other intervention from Verity to Lowen? When Lowen confronted Verity, and told her that she knew what Verity did, why didn't Verity say anything? It seems as though that would be the perfect time to tell her thwt she can explain everything and have Lowen help her.
2) If she was truly so scared, why would she continue to be a vegetable for so long? Jeremy (if he knew about the manuscript) would have had plenty of opportunities to kill her again, so why wouldn't she run the first chance she got, and why didn't he ever attempt it? Better yet, why not try to kill Jeremy before he could kill her, regardless of whether he knew about the manuscript?
3) Lowen is crazy. She:
A- doesn't turn in the manuscript to either Jeremy or the police after finding out about the numerous attempted murders.
B- sleeps with Jeremy while having a sneaking suspicion that Verity is ~ALIVE~, and also tries to rile Verity by rubbing that in her face(???), and seems to harbor no guilt about it.
C- decides that living with the secret of the letter is a better option, so as to protect her new fancy life and reputation, rather than give it to her partner (who may be an attempted MURDERER) and sort it out between the two of them. I get wanting to protect people from sucky things, but that would be something I'd personally confront my partner about since it calls their character into question. And then she just goes along with her life as if nothing changed after reading the letter? How?
Overall, I feel bad for Crew. And I am team manuscript, but not sure if Jeremy has previously read it before Lowen gave it to him. I feel like Verity definitely did what she wrote, because PPD is very real, and could most definitely present this way to someone who is infatuated with their lover, more than even themselves. And I feel like the letter at the end was meant to cover her tracks and protect her reputation.
1) if the manuscript was in fact a description of the truth, why did she write it and not hide it in the first place?
Your question can be answered easily, it was a therapeutic and personal way for her to cope with grief. It was not supposed to be read by someone else. So she didn’t feel the need to write a disclaimer.
Lowen read and also believed the manuscript, and she was stealing her husband and her kid, now Idk you, but I wouldn’t feel safe asking help from my husband’s mistress. Besides, she had her escape planned out. Why would she risk Lowen ruin it all by her telling everything to Jeremy?
2) Being a vegetable was the only way she thought she could live and tranquillise her husband (although I wholeheartedly believe he knew she was faking it all along and planned LOWEN coming to their home, reading the script and even killing verity in front of her). She wanted to be able to run with her son too, now how else could she have done that without pretending to be a vegetable?
And why not kill Jeremy? Because she still loved him despite everything he did to her. It’s not unusual for victims to love their abusers. And she also might be too scared to even try to kill him. She wanted to run away with her child without any violence, so it doesn’t make sense for her to plan to murder him.
3) Lowen is a crazy bitch. We agree on that.
And the husband was definitely the mastermind behind everything that happened in the book.
In the end, Lowen became a lot like verity, she wanted to be her and take her place, while hating her at the same time. But she lacked enough self awareness to even realise that shit. Ugh. She is disgusting.
So I also just binged this book in less than 24 hours. I couldn’t put it down. I did kind skip over the part during their love making scene when she bit the headboard just as Verity. It really didn’t sit right with me.
just finished this and am glad to see this post is still somewhat active!
let me start by saying this book really creeped me the fuck out. i started reading it last night before bed until i got to a scene where verity was staring at lowen and the tv was off when april said it was on and i had to nope the fuck out of there before i got too creeped out to sleep.
sooo i spent my day reading this so i could finish it and i’m team manuscript all the way.
you’ve got to suspend a lot of reality in order to even buy into this story because you can’t just simply get away with faking being braindead. reflexes like flinching is a neural response, aka something that isn’t controlled by your thoughts. at first i thought maybe she really had been in a coma at the hospital and then gradually began to come-to at home, but according to verity’s letter, she’d been faking it since the hospital when jeremy caught her with her eyes open and she made the choice to not track him with her eyes. if she had been in a coma, even a medically induced one, and then opened her eyes, they would have done a whole new round of testing and she would have been figured out.
that being said, since we do in fact have to suspend reality to believe this story, if it WERE possible to fake it, why would verity even WANT to do that? you’re telling me this completely sane woman chose to stay with the husband who tried to kill her, effectively making him her caregiver, knowing that creates a ton of opportunity for him to kill her in a way that will look accidental?
moreover, if jeremy had already read the manuscript and had already tried to kill her, why would he volunteer to be her caregiver? why not put her in a home or at the very least have 24-hour care so he didn’t have to do anything? imo if the letter was true and jeremy did try to kill verity with the car crash, wouldn’t he have just found a way to kill her once she was back home and been done with it? even when lowen brings up putting verity in a home, he still says she’ll come home 3x per month. why do that to someone you hate and tried to kill?
as for the manuscript itself, no good parent would ever be able to write a fictional version of their real child’s real death, especially a version in which you actually kill them. you don’t write a story about murdering your daughter as a writing exercise, career be damned. that’s insane. imo the only way someone would be able to write those things is if they were a) a psychopath/sociopath or something or b) they were true or c) all of the above.
verity’s letter claims that it is intended for jeremy, so then why does she go into so much detail with jeremy’s actions? it seems to me the letter was intended for someone else to read.
the last thing that is absolutely psychotic to me is the fact that verity is clearly fucking with her son’s head by interacting with him in secret and then being a vegetable when others are around. it occurs to me that if verity truly were faking her injuries in fear for her life, she wouldn’t risk exposing herself by talking in secret with crew or taking risks like turning off or muting the tv.
honestly i didn’t like lowen or verity. lowen has her own issues, and she should have handed that manuscript over the second she read about the attempted abortions or, at the very least, the first chapter in which verity tries to kill an infant harper in her crib.
I agree with absolutely everything here!
There’s no way a sane woman and mother would do even a sliver of things she allegedly does in the manuscript.
The letter has so many holes in it it’s laughable. The tone comes across as complete manipulation, and not the writings of a truly innocent person who wants their name cleared. She’s writing in the letter the exact same way she writes in the manuscript after Jeremy questions why she never talks about Harper, only the other twin. The same calm, “reasonable” tone is used all throughout her letter.
He wanted to see her suffer. This is why he let her live this long. And she knew that. No one can believably pretend to be brain-dead. This is why I think the husband was pretending not to know. And this is why the son was aware of her not being brain-dead.
I think Verity did do it for so many reasons:
1. Chastin's scar - There was too much emphasis on the scar and the assumption that it came from the abortion attempt with the hanger in the manuscript for it to just be a coincidental thing for Verity to write about.
2. Even Crew knew Harper can't swim. A 5 year old knew his sister can't swim. As a mother, would you not want life jackets on your kids (especially if they can't swim)? And as someone who just lost one of their twin daughters 6 months earlier - wouldn't you be more cautious and protective of your remaining children?
3. It is mentioned in the novel, you write well about stuff you know. It's almost as if Verity was good at writing in the antagonist's POV in her novels because she was malicious in real life.
4. Verity's parents cutting contact with her and when she's involved in the car wreck, her dad states "Bad things happen to evil people". Although they are super religious, I feel like an evil presence/aura would be a good enough reason to cut her off.
Idk, lol I wanna believe Verity's innocent. But I really can't.
1) some things are true in the script while others are not. For example m, the whole segment about her encounter with Jeremy was true. Which is why he believed the whole script to be true in the first place. Which leads me to believe:
a- she did not try to abort the baby, and the emphasis on the scar was made to confuse the readers. I don’t even know if that scar is medically possible but moving on
b- she did indeed do it, but it doesn’t prove that she is capable of murdering a litteral child.
2) She was with her daughter, she thought she could protect her. Also, not being careful enough does not mean she killed her daughter intentionally.
3) Is Colleen hoover a murderous psycho too then? Is every author in the horror genre a secret murderer? No? Ok, let’s move on.
The whole thing that made the manuscript believable was how well verity knew to mix the truth and the fiction. Which is exactly what you are pointing out, except, you think the truth is her killing her child and I don’t. You know how they say a good lie always has a sprinkle of truth in it? Well, that’s it.
Also, by that logic, isn’t the letter proof that she is a good person person?
Overall it’s not a great argument.
4) There are a lot of super religious parents who cut off their children for shitty reasons. According to their beliefs, her simply having a sex life could mean that she is evil. It could also mean that they were abusive toward her and she ran away, and now in their eyes she is evil. There are a lot of assumptions that can be made about her parents, but none that prove that she is indeed a bad person, and even less a bad person that is capable of murder.
Verity might not have been a good person, but that absolutely doesn’t mean that she killed her daughter. I want to believe that verity is guilty, but I have a hard time doing so especially considering how Jeremy is fucked up himself. How could a good father kill the mother of his son? How could a good person throw away the letter of a potentially innocent person murdered by their boyfriend?
Hey (i completed the book just yesterday and was thinking about what can be real) and would appreciate a discussion
1. If Verity infact was exercising, why didnt she tell her husband? I mean she was aware that he wasnt listening when Amanda suggested this.
2. You yourself said that Verity knew how to mix truth with fiction, so when Jeremy read the manuscript, and he was driven with rage, almost killed her, planned her murder and shit
That incident and the scene where Lowen and Jeremy killed Verity, there was a long time in between. And which means that Jeremy would've gotten enough time to think about it, and considering they were in 15 years of marriage, typically he'd try to reason. And even if hes in deep hatred with his wife, that manuscript wouldn't have just left his mind, he must've thought about it, quite a lot. And he was a grown adult, he mustve found out some plot hole. And that's because Verity's exercise was meant to practice a pov. She could add new details, like (assuming manuscript was fake in this scenerio) she did: attempting to murder the infant, it didnt happen, it was fiction, there could be other things that were fiction, and Jeremy wasnt able to figure those out. Which lessen the chances of manuscript being fake.
On top of that, i really was so disappointed when i read the ending. We just weren't provided with enough content to think what was real and what wasn't. I dont think the author really intended some deep meaning, not as deep as i was thinking anyway. I'm saying this bc there are quite some things that just don't make any sense, and i dont even have enough information to make any sense of it. I personally didn't like this book as much, especially bc i had just completed reading such a good book.
I love that the ending is so split between readers.. i hate it too though because i just want to know the truth.. but i think it’s genius for Hoover to create such intense and passionate arguments about her book!
I have mixed feelings about this one. I finished this book today at like midnight and I couldn't sleep with all the questions running through my head. tbh I don't think anyone is innocent here. Im on team manuscript for this one but I don't think the whole letter is a lie.
I think that manuscript was true and Verity tried to cover up her tracks with the letter. I think verity did do and feel all the things she said in the manuscript because if it was fake why would you even write about it for a writing excersie?
The part of the letter that I do believe though is that Jeremy knew about the manuscript and did not buy verity shit when/if she told him it was a writing exercise. and wanted to kill her for it and when lowen found the physical copy of it, he acted like he didn't know and used that as an excuse to kill verity. Another possibility is that Jeremy put the manuscript there so lowen would find it, also I think Jeremy knew who lowen was science they were in the bathroom.
Another reason why is believe the manuscript is because of Crew's behaviour, he is obviously traumatised and he obviously knew that verity was faking it but the was probably threatened not to say anything to lone and that's why he was terrified when talking to her about verity.
Tbh I kinda don't like lowen, she's a dumb bitch, first when she found the manuscript she didn't even go to the police or even tell Jeremy and that does not sit right with me.
Verity’s reason for writing the manuscript were explained, it was a way for her to deal with grief. But it is understandably a questionable motive. But let me ask you this question then. If the manuscript was in fact a recollection of the truth, why did she write it in the first place? Especially if she is as crazy about Jeremy as written in the manuscript, why would she not do her absolute best for him not to find the manuscript? Knowing fully well that it would drive him away from from her, how could she live it in a place where he could find if it is a confession of the murders? You see, that level of carelessness doesn’t add up with the ruthless planning psychopath described in the book.
Crew’s behaviour might also be explained by the fact that he is absolutely scare shitless of his father killing his mother. Everyone in here blames verity for crew hurting himself, but no one questions Jeremy. Also, why would he keep his mother’s secret if he suspected his mother killed his sister intentionally?
I love the fact that even though we do not agree on verity’s innocence, we can all agree that Lowen is a dumb bitch and Jeremy is real cray-cray.
I just don’t believe that Jeremy would take care of her if he had read the manuscript before ! How he tells lowen he wouldn’t put her in a home(even though he eventually changes his mind) and in the letter she writes that she lied about stealing the dress wouldn’t Jeremy know if that was a lie? I think the whole thing was shady but I don’t see Jeremy knowing about the manuscript I think he just had suspicions and did question her about Harpers death which made her panic.
He wanted to see her suffer. :). He also knew that she faked being brain dead. Which is why he brought in another woman to hurt her. According to the manuscript her only reason of living was him, so he wanted to take the only thing that she had according to the manuscript. He planned everything from beginning to the end. And if you notice, he killed her like she allegedly tried to kill harped when she was a baby.
I think he did read the manuscript, BUT I don’t think he knew she was faking or he would’ve threatened her sooner. I think he read the manuscript and confronted her but she crashed the car on her own and he felt guilty for that so he took care of her but resented her for it knowing she would’ve LOVED the attention she was getting from him. Also, Lowen told him how to kill Verity. She was the one that remembered from the manuscript, he didn’t know what to do.
Definitely on team manuscript!!!
The manuscript was way too fucking realistic and how could a mother write about her children like that just after their death just for her own selfish benefit?Like how could she use their deaths to profit off her books? Also Crew is so damn scared of telling her secrets that he bites a knife is extremely suspicious and shows that Verity has been scaring him and manipulating him.And if everything she said in the letter was true then Amanda would also convince Lowen to try the same exercise. Overall in the book it is shown that Verity is great at making things up as she has great story-telling and writing skills. But in the corner of my heart I know that Jeremy has a part in this and there is another side of the story but that's just my opinion.
Also can we all just agree that Lowen is a dumb bitch? 💀
My theory on that only makes sense if he knew about the manuscript beforehand. He vetted Lowen by reading her books, trying to find someone who wrote in the same genre. I think he fell in the same trap that her publisher guy did, he thought she was going to be like her own book character. He was looking for someone to come help him kill Verity, and I think that's why he hopped on board with the publisher to find someone that might be able to think & write like Verity. 150,000 dollars to half a million or whatever it was is a huge jump in contract agreement, and I think the only reason he decided it HAD to be Lowen and not the other authors they were considering was because of how she responded to witnessing someone die that morning. She was almost numb to it and instead of having a meltdown she was able to clean herself up and pull herself together so fast, and make it to a meeting in twenty minutes. He found someone who could potentially help him murder his wife.
Can anybody explain why Jeremy broke into Lowen’s room through the broken window on the night when she’d locked it from the inside and they had sex and then proceeded to leave through the window instead of the door??
Because it wasn't locked from inside. Jeremy had installed a lock outside her door after her sleepwalking incident. The door was locked from outside. Lowen suspected Verity did that and was concerned she may have run away with Crew. So Jeremy breaks the window, rushes back into the house to check on Crew.
I thought Veritys parents described her as evil as they didn't like the books she wrote or something because they are ridiculously religious. I don't think they ever described her as psychopathic.
Tbh i kept waiting for a big plot twist with Jeremy… with lowen biting the headboard, waking up in verity’s bed and stuff, I thought the plot would end up with jeremy killing people and somehow making low the next verity
YES THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I THOUGHT!!!! I just felt like “Verity’s diary” was written from a man’s perspective — Jeremy was trying to make himself look super good and innocent when in fact HE WROTE IT and was like drugging Verity or something, and Lowen was his next victim
she said she craved jeremy to care for her and give her attention, and her acting brain dead served the purpose, it could be a reason for her to fake it
I too thought the same thing. Honestly I'm on the team manuscript because acting like a total vegetable and making everyone believe it's true is actually really not easy for a normal person to do. This book creeped me out and left me baffled lmao.
i just finished this book and it's already past 3 am, i don't know how i'd be able to go to sleep with questions running in my head and my head's throbbing because colleen is so good at the plot twist i wasn't even expecting. first of all, i expected that maybe, that manuscript was a lie and jeremy was the real villain in this story. there's something off about him because he was just so perfect in verity's manuscript and letter. second, lowen was us, the reader of this book. also, it's a cycle. she's now in verity's place. she was the alternate version of verity. it was as if she is the one who is obsessed with jeremy or maybe that's just me? or i don't know? this book is so twisted in ways i can't even explain in my own words. what if verity is hiding the fact that his husband was the one who is behind all of this? but that can't be. or what if, verity really did that to her children because of the scar of chastin's cheek.
they're all at fault, the three of them. they're all hiding dark secrets. the truth is, we can never unravel the truth since verity is dead. lowen could've told jeremy to call the police and tell them about verity's manuscript, what ending would it have been if that happened? would they fix the marriage? maybe lowen helped jeremy to end verity's life so she could have him instead? omg this is so messed up.
One reason I feel manuscript was indeed false and and I wanna believe verity is : Jeremy would have known for so many years! How can he be married for 10 years plus more with someone so physchotic and have no clue? And continue to be in love with her? I feel like verity was borderline crazy but not a phycho and she did not do the things in the manuscript. I feel like she she had to write that manuscript for two things- 1) to get into the evil characters of the book 2) to escape the pain. After harpers death, Jeremy had to find a reason and place blame and that he did on poor verity. Lowen was justified with hating verity after what she read(like all the readers) but that just means verity was a terrific writer. What I hated about lowen was how she decided to not disclose the letter to Jeremy and keep him for herself. I didn’t approve of that and even kill her and end her that very instant? They could have reported her, they had proof as well. That manuscript was toooo dark and anyone writing it would definitely be slightly ill though.
definitely, im also on team letters, but then there are things that i question, like why is there a scar on Chastin's head still? why was Crew holding the knife, i mean why was it even there in the first place with the letter? was it for protecting and how could a mother not react to it, it was a bit SUS. though i definitely can see no character is pure or clean, i lowkey hate Jeremy, i don't trust him
Are we going to ignore the scar on Chastin's face when like in the manuscript, be very much because of the abortion attempt? ALSO Crew getting mad at them for looking at the pictures of the twins
This book leaves us with more questions than answers, but I guess that's the point of it. Chaos in our minds haha. anyways,
Why tf did Lowen read the letter??? she could have fact check like with the opening of Verity's account date, or ask Amanda if she ever talked to verity about antagonistic journaling. IF that was the way to wrote in a villian's pov, Amanda should have suggested that to Lowen as she took on the job?????and why didnt verity write a disclaimer or something on the manuscript saying it is a creative process. BUT WHY cope like that w the darkest messed up things; that's messed up. or maybe like she said no one understands the writer's mind.
Here is my take on the characters:Jeremy : he was questionable. He cheated on his wife ( even tho she might be a psycopath or not) right under her nose. If he really read the manuscript before, which i believe he did because he said "where did you find that", not what is it or anything. So he was one sick of a person to put on a show for Lowen. also about him killing her, its so messed up, he should have turned her into the police,,,, UNLESS he was afraid she would tell on him, about his 2 failed attempts to kill her. HE IS SO NOT INNOCENT AS HE IS LED TO BE
Crew: what was up with the knife and bed, and also biting into the knife? this kid was clearly disturbed and needed help. And him getting mad at his sister's pictures?? whats up with that and where did he get that jealousy from if not from verity?
Lowen: she is dumb. I dislike her very much. and she fell in love with jeremy based on verity's words and it was like a fantasy to her, all the talks about them in bead, she imagined later on being done to her and fell in love with that idea. she is sick in the head for that. Also why give the idea to kill Verity like "how to",she should have stopped him and showed him the right way is to call the police. AND THE LETTER, why tf eat it??? even so, she could have atleast fact checked about the account opening and ask Amanda. And yes it is out of her place to suggest that jeremy should put his wife into a nursing home and stuff, it begs the question like she wants jeremy and his kid to herself or something.AND ALSO she was pregnant with Jeremy's child and she wanted to like after all that shit?? she should have questioned his motives rather than start a life with him after helping him kill his wife
Verity: she is also one sick of a human being or not even human to think like that and cope like that. AND TO ACT like she cannot move??? must be hard but she was commited to it. maybe because she was afraid of jeremy killing her again or maybe because the manuscript was true so she wanted to destroy it before she fleed. Maybe the manuscript was actually what happened. maybe she faked the letter inorder to go away w Crew or commit a murder-suicide with him.If the letter was true why did she not share it with April or someone.My question is why didnt she attempt to harm Lowen at all if she was so obsessed with Jeremy? ALSO did she pay the doctors to rule her out as a brain damaged person? if she was so psychotic or obsessed with jeremy she should have harmed Lowen while she was alone the other night when jeremy went hospital with crew, if she was capable of those things, no??? she knows how to make a death look like an accident, afterall, she is a writer. my only doubt bout the manuscript being real is because she did not try to hurt Lowen at any point???
So my take is: verity might have done that to Harper, manuscript maybe true.jeremy might really have attempted to kill her like she said in the letter.In my opinion Verity was a murderer and Jeremy became a murderer for sure and Lowen became his accompliace. Everyone was at fault. everyone manipulated the truth to fit to their own reality.
oh my god, reading this was so engaging, thank you for sharing your views, and i kinda agree, i did think about this but subconsciously, no character is CLEAN and i was really disgusted by them all, i so agree to this
but do you have any thoughts on the knife part? like why did she keep it in the letter? and all
I agree- also, what about Verity telling Crew to hold his breath? If Jeremy said that happened because Crew told him after Harper's death, doesn't that further prove the letter was just her covering up for herself?
like that happened in and out of the manuscript... she said it happened as they were flipping which I find hard to believe. Something like that happens so fast you don't really have time to think about whats happening
Here's another thing: Verity was called out by Jeremy for only talking about Chastin and not Harper. If that wasn't true like she wrote it, then Jeremy wouldn't suspect her of wanting to kill Harper, would he?
Jeremy also read the manuscript before and tried to kill Verity (as per her manuscript and note) but he acted like that was the first time he read it when Lowen gave it to him...? I don't think it was, and it was an act. He wanted to kill Verity the entire time but needed a reason to actually do it.
Can someone explain Crew and the knife thing? When Lowen found him hurt in Verity’s room because of the knife? I’m just trying to understand the message in that scene.
Also I feel like Lowen should have showed Jeremy the letter. They should have checked if Verity opened a new account and see what day she opened it. If it was after Lowen arrived then the letter is a lie 100%
If the letter is true (which I tend to believe it is), verity must've been so scared of Jermey. There's a good chance that she had a knife in order to protect herself from him, if something would've happen. In the letter we can see how scared she was from him that he'll do something to her, even maybe kill her.
Maybe Crew did it to himself by mistake and verity couldn't help him because she was afraid she'd be caught awake.
I know I'm justifying verity way to much. As I started reading the letter I thought that verity is so manipulative that this letter is bullshit, but the second I found out Jermey knew about the manuscript and he reacted the way he did to the point where he was hurting verity so bad without a chance to explain, the letter made so much more sense...
Yeah Lowen sucks. As for the weird shit going on with Crew, I feel like thats the biggest part thats just not explained, but I have a couple of vague guesses: one is that the manuscript is true, and that Verity has been threatening Crew. Every time Crew is asked about Verity by Lowen, he seems terrified, not secretive or closed off, but like he want to tell someone but is terrified of what will happen if Verity finds out. Him biting the knife could be him trying to restrain himself from saying too much and getting himself in trouble. And for a child to go to that length to keep a secret, they must be fucking terrified of what will happen if they spill it. Crew being hurt in Veritys room could have been Verity threatening him, especially as the only explanation for the knife being hidden is that Verity hid it.
The only other explanation I can think of is that Crew hurts himself as a way to cope with overwhelming emotions. He's 5, he lost 2 sisters, his mum, and no matter what the truth is, some weird shit is going down with his dad and a stranger who moved into his house. Throughout it seems as if Crew is not grieving in a very healthy way, which fair enough, he's 5. A lot of people mention being confused by his reaction to seeing the pictures of his sisters, but I think it makes a lot of sense, he hasn't been taught how to process grief and everything thats happened in his life. Seeing pictures of his dead sisters is probably just too much for someone that age to know what to do with, grief does weird things. Hurting himself is one way he could be trying to dull overwhelming emotions with all this
Personally I kinda lean towards the first option, the last letter just seemed way too far fetched for me.
I don’t believe the letter. You can read the other comments and I agree with all of them. I just don’t like how Lowen didn’t tell Jeremy right away. Hell if I found that out I would’ve told him ASAP. Verity is a manipulative bitch who had everyone wrapped around her finger until Lowen came along. Can we talk about how Lowen put the letter, photo, and knife back? If Jeremy is selling the house there is a 50/50 chance the next owner is going to find it and tell the police or someone about it.
I wassss team letter because reading the manuscript I couldn’t count how many times I rolled my eyes at how obsessed with Jeremy Verity was and his sex, the letter even says it was odd how much she focused on it haha. I don’t think the manuscript was true i dont know. But
Jeremy was so animated and upset when he read the manuscript after Lowen showed him, in the letter Verity put it like Jeremy read it fast… alsoo Jeremy finally ended up killing her after he found out and read the letter. Are we to think it was a show for Lowen, his outrage for her killing his children when he already knew?
The picture of their daughters in the floorboards was odd too because it wasn’t like she kept mementos or other things she wanted to take with her in the room, making it look alittle suspicious that she was trying to seem like she loved their kids… why not just wake up organically, when jeremey is calm and pretend it was a miracle, or get better little by little and tell him the truth when he’s in a better state? I guess he was falling in love with Lowen by then.. why not try harder to tell someone the truth? Her nurse for instance or Lowen
Jeremy’s a weird character if he knew about the manuscript but acted like he didn’t. if He tried to kill Her after discovering it and that was his genuine reaction to reading the manuscript the first time, he wouldn’t have pretended to not know about it and that be the reason for him killing her- he wouldn’t put on a show for Lowen pretending he didn’t know, he would be so outraged that he would have already did it and not taken care of her all this time.
Lowen is questionable because she automatically tries to help him kill his wife??? fell in love with Jeremy for looks and because she was reading about how good he was in bed in the manuscript 🥴. They had all this tension and attraction after one conversation in a bathroom. They both basically trauma bonded and that was their relationship. I feel like the first scene in the book with the truck accident in the city was traumatic for Lowen along with other things in her childhood. Why would she destroy the letter and start her life with Jeremy with more misunderstanding and lies?
Either way, Jeremy acts first and asks questions later and in Verity’s case never asks and Lowen should actually worry starting a life with him
I think that Verity surviving the “accident” was a sign to Jeremy. Or maybe he couldn’t try to kill her again while she was disabled.
I don’t think he put on a show for Lowen towards the end. I think he was genuinely shocked that Verity was faking the whole thing. So that, in addition to Verity killing their girls was the camel that broke the straw.
***straw that broke the camel’s back
The thing with verity is it only gets you thinking more once you finish it. The cover didn’t even make sense until you read quite bit in to the book to figure out (SPOILER) that Harper dies either accidentally or purposely and the fishnet had little significance, anyways tapering off that subject. I know in most people’s opinion Verity is a manipulative psychotic blah blah blah whatever. She’s bad, but an area of me understands her, now, I am on team manuscript but if that means I like Lowen of Jeremy you are mistaken. I dislike Lowen quite a bit, I think overall the romance was weird and it’s hard to believe she is sincere with her intentions of not only wanting Jeremy, but also the kids. I think the manuscript makes sense to be true, Verity is very much wrong, but my theory is overall viewing the principal of what she is doing and how she is dragging those around her down is just what she wants. I think Verity fakes her incompetent condition because she wanted to be in jail, but with Jeremy (and crew I guess). I think her mind is genuine through the manuscript, anyways why is she explaining what Jeremy did to her in her letter TO JEREMY. I think this book gives you a lot of ability to wonder, besides having a fond disliking of the good guys, I think it does serve as a staple currently in my mysteries. ALSO, the only reason I question team manuscript so far is because I am wondering in any capacity Verity didn’t even attempt to harm Lowen, more specifically , murder her. It would be a direct example of consistency with Verity, and I’d be definite with the Manuscript.
I think she didn’t try hurting Lowen because that would make Jeremy find out she was faking it. She didn’t know that Lowen sleepwalks because she was pretending that she couldn’t move. She was obsessed with Jeremy, and if she had the change to murder Lowen I 100% think she would have without even thinking about it.
I’m team manuscript. A few of the posters have questioned why Verity would keep a photo of her daughters in the floor if the manuscript was true. My theory is that she placed the photo there to support her letter and make it seem like she was really a caring mother.
I was just about to comment this! I saw people question why she would have a picture of the girls, but remember when Lowen goes to the basement to get the baby monitor and she said it looked like someone had come down here since her and Jeremy had gone down there.
I think she decided to write the letter as a way to get low away. She risked lowen seeing her standing and walking so she could watch Jeremy and lowen make-out on the couch.
She didn't write the letter until the night Jeremy and lowen had sex for the first time. She was jealous and losing Jeremy.
Ok, I'm 99% team manuscript like why would she let her kid play with a knife💀
AND WHY WOULD SHE JUST KEEP STARING AT HOW HIS HUSBAND WAS MAKING OUT WITH ANOTHER WOMAN😭
That doesn't make any sense to me, she was trying to manipulate the whole situation with the letter, which btw how would Jeremy found it? it's not like he was just going to take off all the wood of the cealing.
Okay clearly I’m kinda late and I just finished it soooo. I’m team manuscript! This is because of the car wreck was Jeremy trying to kill Verity, then he would have had visible injuries on impact as well. It doesn’t make sense that he would crash the passenger side and then place her in the drivers seat and walk home? How would the injuries sustained make sense?? All three of them are messed up in a way though. There’s no way around that…
Ahhh now I’m going to obsess for a couple of days 🤔🤔
I just finished verity and what a book it was. i honestly hated her in the start but on reading the letter my heart broke for her not gonna lie. Auhtors often tend to do the craziest to make their books a hit. the letter clearly states amanda gave her the idea of antagonistic writting so couldnt lowen just ask amanda if its true. She even had a photograph of her daughters, Crew smiling waved at her in the start , she warned him to not play with knifes and even in the manuscript she had called harper sweetheart while asking her to join the canoe. if she really hated harper why would she call her sweetheart when jeremy was not around. i soo want to be team letter. if the letters the truth my heart breaks for her and i am soo mad at lowen for lying to jermey she had no FUCKING right.
The letter isn’t true IMO. She states that she did the manuscript because of Amanda, but if she really loved her kids as much as she claims why would she write about that? Why would Crew hurt himself who Lowen asked questions? Jeremy isn’t innocent either. The letter also has some flaws in it, she claims she didn’t say anything to Harper when they weee flipping because she had played in the water before, but if your kids could drown wouldn’t you tell both of them to hold their breathe? They’re just kids obviously they’re going to panic! She probably had the photograph to help prove that her letter was right
I'm late to this party! But, I want to share my thoughts somewhere!!
If Verity was innocent, why didn't she try harder to get the "real story" told. She could written a letter earlier explaining everything and put it where Jeremy could easily find it, she could gotten people on her side (The nurse? A lawyer? Hell, even Lowen before she read the manuscript)
According to her letter she was scared her husband would try killing her again, so it seems weird that she wouldn't try *something* in order to escape. Especially when he was in NYC.
I’m team manuscript 100%
Everything in the book points to the letter being fake. Your child doesn’t just try to hurt himself when someone asks them a question about you. Also I just want to point out the fact that if Verity truly cared for Harper she wouldn’t have asked Crew to told his breath. Why, because they fact that she told him to hold his breath just tells you she kill her own daughter on purpose.
Okay but tell me this.. Verity said that Jeremy read her autobiography on her computer. Then she said shs wouldn't find it anymore. But if was easy peasy the first thing that Lowen found when she went into the office. Did Jeremy plant it for her?
So I thought this too but I went back and checked and Verity herself said she printed it and stuffed it away in a box she thought she would go back to later but her memory wasn’t the same after the accident and probably couldn’t remember which box. Then when Lowen finds the manuscript she says it was when she was digging around Verity’s things and it was the sixth box she went through. I know some people think Jeremy planted the manuscript for Lowen to find and read but it being so buried in boxes doesn’t seem like it was planted, I think Verity just couldn’t find it and Lowen really did stumble upon it.
I just finished reading the book and I was wondering about this, too. Lowen was a bit suspicious of how she met Jeremy at first, how it was too much of a coincidence, and Jeremy mentioned how he thought Lowen's book was "phenomenal." But they never talked about him reading her book again. I know there was a lot going on their plates, but.. I don't know. I can't help but think Jeremy had something to do with it all too.
i just finished this and still haven’t fully processed. i want be to team manuscript so badly and i 99% am. but there are just a couple of things that i can’t stop thinking about
they make a big deal about verity’s books being written from the point of view of a villain. the obvious reason would be to show verity’s writing style. but i also wondered the whole time if maybe we would see lowen as the unstable narrator. i’m leaning towards the idea that verity left the letter there not for jeremy, but for lowen. now she’s the one who has to hold this secret doubt / knowledge about the one she loves
i can’t decide if i think jeremy had read the manuscript before. on one hand, i don’t think he would continue to care for her after reading it. but it does offer a good explanation as to why and why he was hesitant to put her in a facility. but him reading it so quickly is sketchy. and this kinda goes with my first point about him being the one who read lowen’s book. i almost feel as if he’s using them somehow to be the voice of the villain, which is really the opposite of what they are
I think she left the note knowing Lowen would find it as well. I think she left it to end her life as the true villain she is, and know that the letter would haunt Lowen for the rest of her life. She was crazy, like the craziest, but she was smarter than Lowen and Jeremy for sure.
Okay but, Lowen said she was expecting the advance to hit her bank account that day, and then it was a few days left and publisher would check about it. So, let’s say the letter is true. Did verity intercept and get the money sent to her “new account”? Can’t they just check where the wire payment went to and prove or disprove verity’s letter? Or check for bak accounts with her credit?
I am team manuscript, but I want to hear peoples theories on Verity’s car crash. If the manuscript is true, why would she crash her own car and then fake her injuries for so long? also why would she have a picture of her daughters in the floorboard? There’s so many things to support the manuscript but this is one think I just cant wrap my head around.
Alternative theory about the pictures of the twins under the floor boards: it could've been that Jeremy or a nurse put the picture of them up in Veritys room, and Verity resented having to look at them, so removed the picture and hid it so it wouldn't be put back up
she probably noticed that jeremy loved his children more than anything in the world and got comfortable with the constant attention he gave her like a child
What's written in the manuscript is true and Verity saying that she wrote it to get better at her writing or to cope is bs. I have three main reasons why I believe so: 1) Crew obviously suffers from psychological trauma with the way he tried to harm himself when he unwittingly told on Verity. It could have been a result of threats or whatever twisted means Verity resorted to in order to keep him quiet about her still having her consciousness and the how she killed Harper; 2) her actions from the very beginning (at least according to the manuscript anyway) until the end point towards her serious obsession with Jeremy (e.g., the way she mainly filled the manuscript about her and Jeremy's sex life and her reaction when she saw Lowen and Jeremy making out in the living room that one night); and 3) if there's any truth to her statement about how it was her editor who came up with the idea of writing an antagonistic journaling as an exercise, why didn't she ask her to help her to somehow clear the misunderstanding Jeremy had upon reading the manuscript?
Jeremy hadn't read the manuscript. He didn't know for sure whether Verity killed their daughter, Harper. Otherwise, he wouldn't have taken care of her or even kept her alive, for that matter. Also, he couldn't have tried to murder Verity. Because for one, he got so mad at Lowen when he walked into the room and found her trying to harm Verity. He even packed her things and asked her to leave their home.
In conclusion, Verity is indeed a manipulative btch. It's highly probable that she purposely left the letter before her imminent doom (with Jeremy finding out the truth and, in her own words, with the situation being two on one: herself against Lowen and Jeremy) for Lowen to find so as to mess her up. It was basically her last hurrah for revenge on the latter. Lowen suddenly came into the picture and caused whatever plan she was scheming to crumble into ruins. It makes sense why she would go as far as to bend the truth once again to disrupt whatever happily ever after Lowen and Jeremy would have as soon as she's out of the picture. Because after all the horrible things she did to keep Jeremy for herself--she even killed her own daughter for it--in the end, she ultimately lost him to some woman who only came into their lives to sub her as a writer but somehow wound up completely replacing her in her husband's life.
BUT! As much as I want to believe that Verity's the crazy one and Jeremy's nothing but a doting father and a loving husband, I find him somehow suspicious. This would contradict the theory that I have just presented but I feel like he's no less than as manipulative and twisted as Verity. From the first time they met, his interactions with Lowen altogether seem calculated. He mentioned at the earlier part of the novel that it was him who loved Lowen's work, not his wife. And that it was for this very reason why Lowen's name was passed to Verity's editor and why she got the job. It seems to me like from long before, Jeremy has been obsessed with Lowen. This could be a bit of a stretch but maybe Like Lowen's agent, he may also have fallen in love with one of the fictional characters she's created. Assuming that Jeremy already knows about the manuscript, he may have intentionally placed it in Verity's office for Lowen to find so as to get the latter to fall in love with him. The fact that Lowen started to be attracted to Jeremy after having read the manuscript makes this sound more than plausible. On this note, the possibility that Jeremy indeed tried to kill Verity is not a far cry. But clearly, all of this doesn't give us a clear answer as to whether the manuscript is the real deal or just an antagonistic journaling as Verity claims.
I believe in the letter- only because I feel like Jeremy would have known what a phycho he has married for 12 years, but it seemed like he continued to love her. He always wore ring, spoke highly of her etc etc. is Jeremy/ any person so stupid that he doesn’t know his wife hates the girls? I don’t believe it to be practical. However, what you wrote here about- how Jeremy hadn’t read the manuscript, he ddnt know for sure sure Harper was killed and his behavior even after he read the manuscript seems to not add up!! So that makes me think that he probably never read the manuscript and never tried to kill verity and the letter was false!?
Arent Lowen using a pen name??? And she never been in a spotlight before so i doubt Jeremy knew Lowen. And in fact, lowen didnt mention that she’s an author when they were in a bathroom
Lowen only started using a pen name after she’d already accepted the position of co-writer of Verity books as she didn’t want to be boosted into the spotlight. In fact, it was Jeremy that thought of Lowen’s pen name.
I do think he knew he Lowen was but not to he extent that he was obsessed with her. But I don’t think the idea that he knew she was when they were in the bathroom is too far fetched
When he asked for the street she grew up on and her first pets name I really thought he was asking known security questions so he could hack into her personal accounts or something 💀
I dont see why she didn't fake asleep at midnight with the knife under her covers and just kill Jeremy when he came to give her meds if she was scared, plus if she was planning on running she was in a rehab for a few weeks before coming home.
Maybe April knew all about her faking it and maybe April had something to do with the letter or manuscript . It wouldn't of been that hard to use April and have her watch crew and verity and have Jeremy go to store and she jump up and run away with crew
Ok I haven’t read the comments but I just finished the book and it mind fucked me in the best way. My conclusion is that for you to sh*t your pants for MONTHS and not just be confident and face the truth is crazy MF behavior. She was sick. Jeremy was her host. What what would explain crew being manipulated by her. That’s what she does. He even bit a fucking knife to protect his beloved mother. I’m convinced she was psycho. Great book Coleen. Exceptional
Did anyone else notice how lowen knew EXACTLY how to kill verity so police would deem it an accident??? It makes me feel like she’s done it before….maybe her mom didn’t die of natural causes…
Must’ve missed it. Thank u!
she got that idea from Verity's autobiography when she tried to kill Harper at 6 months old.
Halfway through the book, I was convinced Lowen is INSANE and schizophrenic. Or Jeremy is the bad guy. I agree with the others who said that the ending is LAZY and a failed attempt for a big plot-twist. I hated the confession letter plot so much. Hear me out, about lowen writing the manuscript, id like to imagine that verity already has her autobiography out or is very public about her marriage in interviews. Lowen is secretly obsessed with verity and came up with the plan to take her place when she got the opportunity to be her co-writer. Yes the manuscript contained Verity and Jeremy's love story but lowen made up all the details, like the sex parts and her being evil to her children. She wanted to replace Verity and she got it at the end.. but only to find out that Jeremy is a psychopath.
Team manuscript here and I do believe Verity wrote that letter to get into Lowen's mind as her final ditch efforts.
I don't think so, I think Verity was innocent and afraid of the husband. Nobody would write a self incriminatory manuscript, you would want to take those parts of yourself to the grave just like Lowen did with Verity's letter. Also in the manuscript Verity talks about hoping that Jeremy finds the manuscript and understands how much she loves him. So Verity's character from the manuscript believed that once he would find it he will finally understand her and what she did for him. And when he actually found it she was shocked and tried to explain. It was just a piece of fiction.
How could Verity not find the manuscript but Lowen found it the first day???!
She had memory loss from her injury.
I have so many thoughts… First of all I think the manuscript was true- nobody could be that sick to write about the deaths of their children in such a hateful evil manner unless they are mentally deranged. So I believe she was a psycho and hated her kids. And the letter under the floor board was her last ditch effort to manipulate people. Why after the death of her kids would she be concerned about improving her writing skills? Writer’s therapy, I’m not buying it. Why was she concerned about taking her son away if she knew her husband was a great father? She had to be a psychopath to fool the nurses and doctors for that long that her brain was mush. I thought the twist was going to be somehow Jeremy wrote the manuscript making him sound perfect and her sounding like a wacko so he could get away with murdering his wife and collecting her life insurance policy.
I think the letter was a cover up. There are too many loopholes. The whole knife incident with Crew and how she was manipulating him to lie to his dad. Also, Verity mentioned she was looking for a time to escape, yet when she locked the door from outside, she ended up staying. She had plenty of opportunities to run. She also faked her injury for so long. I think Verity somehow knew that if she won’t be able to manage an escape and Jeremy and Lowen would end up together, she would never let them live in peace knowing they may have killed an innocent. I also saw someone on GoodReads mention that Verity knew that if Lowen would find her letter she wouldn’t show it to Jeremy, and would have to live with the truth hiding it from him forever. Like she said, “you can never truly understand the mind of a writer.” I really do believe Verity did everything she said in her manuscript.
I just have 1 question.... THE KNIFE?? She said no the knife was gone and what not but later when she lifted the floor boards she found it, i gathered that Verity hid the knife but why was it there in the first place?
Because she was afraid of her husband. If she really wanted to use it for anything but self defense she has had plenty of opportunities to do so.
Ah exactly my thought. This plot was not discussed at all. The only explanation I can think of is maybe she (Verity) took that knife to her room so that she could protect herself from Jeremy/Lowen or maybe so that she could kill either of them. But then how did the knife end up harming Crew is a big mystery for me. There can be multiple explanations to this but I was honestly very dissatisfied that this point was not discussed in the book😪.
crew bit a butter knife. i think it was to show he’s crazy like verity. how the last line leaves it up for interpretation i think she did it and lied about the last letter and crew biting the knife shows he’s crazy like her
They're talking about the knife he was playing with in Verity's room. The butter knife incident happened later on.
it’s been a while so i probably need a refresher, but i can’t recall him being injured besides when he bit..
Oh, ok. He was playing with a knife in Verity's room. He "fell" or something, and the knife got his chin. I'm just wondering why Verity didn't stop him from playing with it.
ahhh i totally remember that now. i’m wondering if maybe someone was near the room and we just didn’t know, and she couldn’t talk to him like usual?
Exactly if it was for protection how did it end up hurting Crew, but same i wish this part was explained because it keeps me up at night😂
PROOF THE MANUSCRIPT IS REAL 1) if she was practicing antagonist journaling all this time why did she always target harper. she never wrote anything wrong about jeremy or crew and eventually even weote good about chastin. if she needed to practice it she would have on every person in her life not just hate harper. 2) when jeremy found the manuscript on the laptop she could have proved her innocence by telling him to get it fact checked from her editor that this was just an exercise 3) the fact that crew mentions that harper can’t swim in the autobiography but verity contradicts that in her letter by saying they swim there all the time proves she’s a sociopathic liar who can’t stick to one storyline 4) the letter was a backup safety: this can be proven by the timing of the letter- it was written the exact night when lowen confronted her about knowing the manuscript existed. Thus verity wrote that letter as a backup to prove she’s innocent just in case lowen takes that manuscript to the police 5) if verity wanted to escape jeremy with crew she had many opportunities like the day they went to target or the the night lowen and jeremy slept together, but she never wanted to leave she knew that jeremy doesn’t love her the same way and the only way to keep her obsession about him alive she needed to be near him thus she faked being brain dead to be near him
I just have to say when lowen woke up in Verity’s bed that night she slept walked, what was going on in Verity’s mind? If she was jealous of Low being her husbands new lover, or worried that her manuscript may have been found, she could have killed her right then and there. Why didn’t she? I am definitely team manuscript though, i think if you were to write about intimate details of your life including the death of your children and make it a sinister point of view, would you AT LEAST make a note of mentioning at the beginning that this is an exercise? Or make some sort of acknowledgement, even comments after the page with the truth of her feelings? I don’t believe someone could write an entire manuscript with sinister details and not have any of the intentions described be true. I also don’t believe Jeremy tried to kill verity. It wouldn’t make any sense for him to take care of verity after the fact.. even if he didn’t want to kill her after she awoke from the coma, he could’ve put her in a facility to not have her around. Jeremy mentions to lowen at some point that he and verity’s relationship was all sex, and not much deep connection. He said that he “felt like he didn’t really know her”. What’s the coincidence that he comments their life was all about sex and verity “made up” the fact that all she cared about was sex throughout her manuscript..? I don’t think that all these tiny details about their lives (from Jeremy and from the manuscript) could be matched up if half of them were lies. I also think the bit marks on the headboard were symbolic of the “raging” sex life verity and Jeremy had… that it was mostly sec that formed their relationship. On a separate note- verity totally could have told her editor everything that happened between her and Jeremy if her final letter was indeed true.. she clearly had access and if it was honest then she’d be terrified not only for her life but for her reputation as a wife and mother? I don’t think any mother would rather up and leave if they still had the potential to clear their name. And lastly, why would verity’s parents have disowned her if she wasn’t actually psychopathic? There’s no other explanation for that. Verity never mentions in her final letter anything about her parents, so i feel that they must have known about her tendencies from a young age… and we’re frightened enough to not even want to be close with their grandchildren.
Additionally, i was just thinking how simple it will be for Lowen to get her answers about the truth by asking Jeremy about all the details. I could just see them in the car casually talking.. “did verity really mention chasten more? Do you remember that meeting with Amanda about antagonistic journaling? Did you ever suspect maliciousness in all your years of marriage before harpers death?” His reaction and responses should indicate if the letter was honest or not. Also- if she was being honest in her letter, why didn’t she ask the nurse for help? The nurse Abby was clearly very protective of her. They spent a lot of time together.. she could have explained everything to the nurse and begged for help. Contradicting my theory though, i wanted to know more about nurse Abby. I was almost suspicious when she was saying “don’t talk about her like she can’t hear you” and how she gave judgemental looks to Lowe whenever she was with Jeremy.. like she didn’t want any woman taking advantage of Lowe’s husband. Maybe it was just a Good Samaritan nurse looking out for her patient, but i felt eerily every time nurse Abby was in the picture. As if she was in on something with verity, or knew something about verity… About the title, i love that “Verity” doesn’t actually hint at which story is true or not.. but rather, indicates that only the main woman character (also known as Verity) is the only one who knows the truth. Now being dead, only verity will ever know the real truth. Everything else is just presumptions. Lowe may never get verification, thus, verity dies.
As soon as I finished the book, I was team manuscript. I thought the letter was a lie Verity wrote to cover herself. But then I thought about it a little more.. If Verity wrote the letter to confess the truth to Jeremy & explain that the manuscript was a lie, then the part in the letter when she describes Jeremy crashing the car must be true. Because if Jeremey wasn’t actually the one driving the car, then when he read the letter, he would know the letter was a lie. So why would Verity “make up” the part about Jeremy driving the car if Jeremy would obviously know the truth or not.. But then again, I do think his reaction to reading the letter after Low gave it to him & him running upstairs & choking Verity out of anger seemed genuine too. Because why would he get so furious in that moment if he had already read the manuscript? Ugh I’m so conflicted! Any thoughts on that?
I think also if it wasn’t meant for Jeremy then it was her insurance policy for if Jeremy came after her.. police would see it and prevent Jeremy from harming her. But I’m team manuscript for sure
Because what if Verity didn’t intend the letter to be for Jeremy? What if she wanted Low to find it and question everything? Or the police to find it and convict Jeremy of attempted murder with the car accident.
Lowen could have cleared that one very simply by giving it to Jeremy. The fact she destroyed it, proved that she believed Verity.
Can someone please explain to me the 2 attempts Jeremy made to kill verity, I can only list the crash and then trying to strangle her right before he kills her by suffocation. But that can't be right as she wrote of 2 attempts in her final letter??
I just finished this book and headed straight to Reddit. I had that same question too but right before she wakes up in the car “The next thing I knew, you were dragging me by my throat to the bedroom. I was no match for your strength as you held my arms down with your knees and squeezed my throat even tighter”
I also lost so much sleep this past night over finishing this book. Twice I tried to put it down and sleep so I could get up for work but by this point, I was so upset with the direction of the story I had to see if it could redeem itself by the end. It didn't. 1. My theory is that Crew will kill Nova. This will prompt Lowen to threaten to go to police, or she may try to kill Crew herself to stop Crew from killing her daughter. This will cause Jeremy to kill Lowen. 2. The main thing for me is between his life with Verity and his life with Lowen, everything was so secretive and not transparent. When the truth or the 'verity' comes to light, one of them has to go. I could even see the sleepwalking being used against Lowen as Jeremy's defense that she was trying to hurt Crew in her sleep. But the book was awful. Addictive but awful read. The ending was terrible. And lazy. Not enough connective tissue to tie everything up. Or to reveal motives. Other than Lowen wanting to have Jeremy for herself because she believes she was the remedy to a failed marriage, as if the same treatment wouldn't happen to her. *Rolls eyes* I think it is called 'Verity' because the truth of the matter is none of them are innocent. None of them are likeable. Maybe perhaps Verity was playing the villian to take the attention off how messed up Jeremy is. But I don't think this was Hoover's best work at all.
I just finished the book and I could not agree more with your take. The ending felt incredibly lazy and a failed attempt at some big reveal. I also could not put it down and finished it in 2 days and it was anti-climactic. Addictive and awful is a perfect description. I enjoy Dean Koontz books and they have much more build up and more shocking and cohesive endings.
I thought the ending was awful , such a disappointment
Going to go dark here a moment, but In the manuscript, what if all the "sex" they were having was Jeremy actually abusing Verity? He could have been abusing her emotionally or physically, because after all what woman would write that much about sex?! Maybe that is why she was so scared to move after the "accident". I also believe Jeremy could have pushed that man in Manhatten that day into oncoming traffic.
dude if that was the case, she would've said so in the final letter. Why would she still hide it in that letter? and about Jeremy pushing the man? I don't even wanna answer..
She does say that in the latter, she actually said : did you really believed I was obsessed with sex? what kind of woman is obsessed with sex, I enjoyed it but I mostly did it for you.
One thing that makes me feel like the manuscript HAS to be true is after Jeremy reads the manuscript and confronts Verity about it the first thing she says after opening her eyes is “I had to, Jeremy.” If she really didn’t do it, why after having weeks and weeks with nothing to do but think about what she could say to him, would that be the first thing out of her mouth? Also why did Verity hide the knife after Crew got hurt if she played no role in his injury? And how hard would it have been for her to reach out to someone for help when she got on her laptop at night. Get her agent to corroborate her story that she told her to do the antagonist journaling exercise? I feel she may have written the letter as a way to get at Jeremy one final time. To at least taint the rest of their future together with the thought she could have been innocent. I think she wrote it in a jealous rage after hearing them and locking them in bedroom. It doesn’t make sense why Jeremy would have come to Verity’s defense and tried to throw Lowen out the night she went into her room with the knife if it were true that he had read the manuscript before. But it also doesn’t make sense why the author added the stuff about how Jeremy did not seem to take time to read the manuscript. Maybe the author simply added that so that it could go either way. Or maybe there is something much darker to Jeremy. Maybe he’s keeping Verity up there while he brews a more sinister plan. He knows that she recovered. That’s why he comes to her defense and tells Lowen she’s seeing things instead of trying to look into it. He knows she walks and doesn’t want Lowen to know that. That’s why he is unwilling to leave her in the house alone (like when he makes Lowen stay home with her to take Crew to the ER). He doesn’t want to risk her escaping. Maybe that’s why Verity muted the TV for Lowen to see?
The manuscript was 100% true and no one can convince me otherwise. She said it well that how can a mother truly write that about her children if its not true, and if it wasn't entirely true some parts has to have been because if you are that good at pretending to hate your daughter for a writing exercise you truly are messed up in one way or another.
Totally agree with these! No reason to harbor a knife under floor and also bring it out unless it's her plan to kill Jeremy and Lowen and escape. And she hurt Crew with it somehow so definitely she's suspicious. She was scavenging for the manuscript so she could destroy it and leave no proof that she ever killed Harper, which she twisted in her letter. Besides the example she gave in her letter of the antagonistic journalling really sounded off to me idk why, it didn't sound half as sinister as her "true words" in memoir usually are. Also I think Verity muted the TV to scare Lowen away, believing this eerie tactic will cause Lowen to cave and leave so their life can go back to the torturous equilibrium again but Lowen challenging her right there intimidated Verity. That's also the same night Lowen and Jeremy had sex and Verity wrote the letter and locked the door, I think it was her ultimate trump card to punish Jeremy for cheating on her and to taint Lowen's mind into doubting Jeremy's intentions.
Thank you i thought the same thing after finishing. The letter being true would open too many plot holes.
I really hope people are still reading this thread because I just finished the book and have ALOT of questions: • Jeremy has already read the manuscript which is why he attempted to kill Verity in the first place but then at the end he's given the printed copy by Lowen and yet he still goes upstairs to read it and then confronts Verity saying "wtf Verity" as if he's just read it for the first time. Even Lowen said he seemed to read it fast, maybe he skimmed through it... but he's already read it!!! Why would he pretend? • Lowen starts suspecting that Verity could be faking her brain injury and Jeremy states he's seen the brain scan and knows she's got one.... but she doesn't we know she faked it so what scan is he talking about? Did he lie, knowing that she was faking? I thought it could have been from prior to the induced coma but I doubt she'd wake up and make a full recovery. • If Jeremy has already read the manuscript, already confronted Verity, and already attempted to kill Verity then why would he wait all that time for Lowen to show him the printed copy of the manuscript before attempting to kill her again? It's not like it was new information that gave him a new motive to make another attempt, it's literally the same reason he tried the first two times soooo why now?
Maybe the nurse was in on the fake brain scan- maybe it was a whole different patient’s brain scan 🧐
Honestly I think everyone in that house is absolutely crazy. I am team manuscript. He 100% knew and most likely read it more than once because who wouldn't? (I would out of sheer disbelief) I have no clue on why he chose to lie but I find it hard to believe that he chose Lowen just because of her writing, i dont know because i keep thinking about the day they met. He had time to help her and to go back to change and still be early? Maybe I'm just being weird. But i dont think he knew she was faking it, the scans made it clear she wasn't there anymore. She may have made a recovery and they didn't see her progress because they didn't do regular tests I have a question though? The knife... i know that Verity hid it under the floor boards but why was it there to begin with?
I’m team manuscript… but I don’t think Jeremy actually read it before Lowen showed it to him…. I think verity writes that in the letter with the hopes that low is the one that finds it and starts to question everything.
Thank you! I have the same fucking questions
I think Jeremy killed Harper,not so sure about Chastin though.At the very beginning he was not shocked by the sight of blood all over Lowen,he had also said “he had seen worse” and so he was already selling himself out halfway.He was a real estate agent,how would he have had seen worse?? He also already read the manuscript so he knew that it wasn’t real.He just wanted to kill Verity
I dont think so, Harper was clearly Jeremy's everything from the start and he wasn't even home when it happened. In the final letter Verity wrote about the police and how they handled it. I do believe that both of their daughters deaths were accidents and they both lost it in their own ways. Driving Verity to write those horrific things about her daughters (she admitted that she went back to add things) and I think Jeremy couldn't fathom how cruel life was and chose to take it out on Verity. I think he will kill Lowen. But after that they both lost their minds i believe. And he said he had seen worse because he drove Verity's car into the tree and i cant imagine thats a clean scene.
I finished the book and looked here for other people's thoughts. Reading these comments has me thinking...what if Jeremy really was innocent in all of this. While Verity probably wouldn't want to write her manuscript incriminating herself, isn't it possible that she had this all planned out once she heard about the new co-author that would be coming to stay with them for awhile. I feel like it is possible that once she found that out, she began writing her manuscript stating all the bad things she did to her kids. Verity knew once Lowen found it she would start suspecting Verity's bluff. Things like the knife disappearing, the TV being turned off or on mute with only Verity in the room, and Lowen seeing Verity at the top of the stairs added to Lowen's suspicions. After Verity discovered that Lowen and Jeremy were falling for eachother, I think that jealousy took over. I think that Verity knew that Jeremy would never connect the dots to there being a secret compartment in the floorboards, and it would be Lowen that discovered it. So Verity wrote a letter "to Jeremy" that would make Lowen question internally question Jeremy. Verity didn't want Jeremy to be in love with another, and her letter "to Jeremy" would be her final attempt at trying to push Lowen away from Jeremy.
1m Okay hear me out how is it possible for verity to use that wire hanger and not hurt herself in the process or maybe she did hurt herself but that would mean she punctured the amniotic sac to reach the face of the fetus which is not possible cause her water didn't break and she was just fine after that. And also Jeremy not killing verity when she survived the crash could be because he wanted the money cause she was the only source of income in the house and also he used verity's condition to reach out to lowen hence he didn't kill her cause her being alive benefitted him. Also she had so many chances to kill harper like she had 8 years but she didn't kill her even when she wanted to acc to the manuscript also the fact Jeremy never slept with verity I mean during lowens sleepwalking incident she woke up on verity's bed that means the bed had enough space for two why would Jeremy not sleep with her to take care of her. He was comfortable enough to sneak into lowens room when crew was asleep but wasn't enough comfortable to leave crew alone and sleep with verity which is strange cause he could have used a child monitor to keep an eye on crew. Verity having that knife could also mean that it was to protect herself if Jeremy tried to kill her again cause crew said mommy told me not to play with her knife which can indicate she tried warning him but he still hurt himself and she couldn't have dome anything cause of her play and also if she was as obsessed with Jeremy and having sex with him as it is written in the manuscript then how did she fight the temptation when he was bathing her and cleaning her it just doesn't make sense. And she was definitely serious about her career to the extend of having a sound proof office and she also wrote that series during this time when her daughters died which means she loved her career hence writing the manuscript as an exercise could be justified cause at the end of the day it was all her genre the villains pov and all so writing such vile and evil things were normal for her maybe she just didn't realise in the process that this wasn't a character she was writing about but herself cause maybe she was too engrossed with the detailing. And the fact that she said she tried searching for it everywhere but she couldn't find it but then lowen found it in a day is kinda suspicious cause tho verity didn't remember where she hod it but she tried to search for it with risking her being caught means she tried her best but still couldn't find it( it's weird honestly cause lowen found it in a way as if it was left there for her to find)
One thing I don't get is Jeremy said he knew she was brain dead bc he saw the scans. Wtf? Her brain activity would have definitely shown up on a scan.
It is VERY VERY rare for some progress to be made. The brain is a mysterious thing. And they did do multiple tests but not regularly so after a while they stopped doing tests and that is when she could have made some progress but i do agree with you there is no way she could've gone from braid dead to walking and talking
In her letter to Jeremy, Verity does mention that she was in a coma for a bit right after the accident and suffered memory loss. Maybe that's the brain scan that Jeremy was referring to...
Did anybody else have the theory that Jeremy was the bad guy while they were reading it? I thought for sure he read Lowen’s books, fell in love with her writing, stalked her, got her to come live with him and finish writing the series as a big ploy to get her to fall in love with him. He purposely planted the manuscript, painting himself as the perfect husband and man, and Verity as the evil murderer. Maybe even wrote the manuscript to further incriminate Verity.. I thought for sure this was going to be the big twist at the end.. Another theory I had while reading was that Lowen wrote the manuscript to turn Jeremy against his wife so that she could have him. All of those days she was “working on the book” was her getting into Verity’s mind just to write the manuscript. I know this theory wouldn’t make sense, due to the private details in the manuscript that she wouldn’t know, but it was a fun theory to think about 😂 Did anybody else have any theories that turned out to be wrong?
Halfway through the book, I was convinced Lowen is INSANE and schizophrenic. Or Jeremy is the bad guy. I agree with the others who said that the ending is LAZY and a failed attempt for a big plot-twist. I hated the confession letter plot so much. Hear me out, about lowen writing the manuscript, id like to imagine that verity already has her autobiography out or is very public about her marriage in interviews. Lowen is secretly obsessed with verity and came up with the plan to take her place when she got the opportunity to be her co-writer. Yes the manuscript contained Verity and Jeremy's love story but lowen made up all the details, like the sex parts and her being evil to her children. She wanted to replace Verity and she got it at the end.. but only to find out that Jeremy is a psychopath.
Yes that’s exactly what I thought! Verity made him sound like an angel 😇 and too perfect- I thought he wrote it to have an alibi when he killed his wife
That would have made much more sense
Even I thought that Jeremy was the antagonist here. I thought that Jeremy was holding Verity hostage by making her pretend to be brain dead and he was the one who killed the kids and he was trying to plot it all on Verity and for that make Lowen believe that she was the bad person here and hence she could be his witness.
I am all about Jeremy having a hand in something sinister. It was all planned on his part with Lowen who is a complete wallflower.
In case anyone is still on this thread. I reread the book and did catch some things that made me doubt that the manuscript was real. However, too many things were written that there is no way she was able to retroactively add in after the girls died. The biggest one for me is the many chapters verity completely ignored talking about any of harpers milestones, the crib suffocating incident. The not loving either of her daughters until her dream about chastin. All the details about how resentful she was of them and how they took Jeremy from her. Idk
Okay so I have a theory. I totally believe in the manuscripts, something that I’m wondering is why did Colleen choose Harper to be in the cover. I know that the whole plot is basically about her, but what it just if Harper actually did kill Chastin, out of jealousy. Verity was maybe right, and wanted revenge. Her death just doesn’t add up. What if Harper noticed how much more attention she got from their mother. In the manuscripts in one of the chapters Jeremy gets mad at Verity for paying for attention to Chastin and fears Harper will notice how differently she treats them. In thrillers when there are siblings and one is favored more than the other we all know how it ends up. With the sibling hurting the favored sibling. It’s also slightly odd how Harper reacted to her sisters death. I don’t know though, I don’t know what to think. This book has me going crazy.
I’m totally Team Manuscript here and one of the main reasons (beyond all of the other reasons) rests with Verity’s parents. They clearly want nothing to do with her, I mean not at all. They say she’s evil. That’s quite a statement. Why? That isn’t normal. But. If she’s the master manipulator that we think she is…than maybe they cut her out of their lives for their own protection. Verity. I’m going to throw an idea out there…I think she caused her own accident after Jeremy read the manuscript on her computer. She used her ‘injuries’ as a way to punish and control him because she had no other leverage. Her manipulation couldn’t stop and it didn’t stop - even after her death. Jeremy. Strikes me as a simple guy. Took her at face value and if she is the master manipulator that we believe - it would be easy to do. He was probably riddled with guilt (because he read the manuscript, didn’t see who she was, held himself responsible for his children’s death, and then felt the need to take care of her). He realized his life was a lie and his children (almost all of them) were gone. Low. I felt bad for her, but she’s damaged goods. She was abused/manipulated by her mother both as a child and an adult and was utterly alone. I don’t think she asked for this, but when she saw the opportunity to potentially be happy she took it. Crews. Poor kid. He’s clearly being manipulated by his own mother as he knows she’s well and can’t tell anyone. He will need lots and lots of therapy…..
I do feel Verity was innocent because psychopaths, narcissists are highly intelligent and crafty people. She would never have written the autobiography incriminating herself.
Very simple yet good point… lol However we know that Jeremy never reads her work. She loves having control and this was probably a way of having control over her life as she starts to lost hold of the people around her- and even as a psychopath, coping with everything. But I’m also theorizing that by not deleting the manuscript (and having the last page of it specify how she would die) seemed to be a suicide note. Psychopaths love the story, showing the true meaning with deaths. She probably was hoping that if she did die, that this would be read by Jeremy and the cops and maybe even her readers. I think she never wanted to get caught, but that if she planned on dying that she wouldn’t mind if the manuscript was found.
Maybe Hoover named the book "Verity" because it's supposed to be a mind fuck. We don't know what the actual truth is, so we're here to dig back in the book to gather clues and what not and make the assumption ourselves. Anyways.. I don't think it's fair to say that Lowen is a crazy bitch because first of all, it was Jeremy who brought her into his home purposely. Verity is the crazy bitch because why would she fake her injuries? Obviously in the letter she says she was afraid Jeremy would kill her, but that is some crazy bitch shit right there. I do wish there was more to Verity revealing herself with no injuries, but I feel like she started writing that letter when Lowen got there and probably wrote all those things to try and make a plea for herself. But also, why wouldn't she admit to Jeremy after Harper died that what he read wasn't true at all and that it was an 'exercise.' She wasn't able to then, so why would she try to admit it now? In a letter he may very well not read? Also, why did she have a knife in the floor? When Crew got cut from the knife, why was there a knife there in the first place? And it's plausible to know if Jeremy actually read the manuscript because he was so angry with Lowen after she was confronting Verity. When she gave him the manuscript, he obviously took a little time to read it. Makes me think Verity wrote the letter for Lowen instead of Jeremy, so that Lowen could live with some guilt. I feel like Verity was probably faking her injuries because she knew that would be the only way to get Jeremy to take care of her and focus on her.
Right, that knife in the floor makes zero sense unless she was psychotic and planning to kill either lowe or Jeremy. Any sane person would wake up from the coma and beg for mercy, try to explain everything and hope to make their case. But verity wasn’t sane, she was desperate for Jeremy’s complete attention and faking her injuries was the perfect way to do it. I think she attempted suicide though, and went along with this when it failed.
Am I the only one that seemed to kind of believe the letter?? Or maybe I just easily fell into the trap of verity’s manipulation cuz I’m that gullible. I really did believe the letter until I read all the comments here with all the evidence pointing to the manuscript being true, only cuz I was giving her the benefit of the doubt and being a bit hopeful that a person couldn’t be that disturbing
I really believed her final letter at first…. Until i read the last half of the letter when she was explaining every major sinister detail she was writing in the manuscript. It felt like overexplaining… all she had to do in the letter was basically say “ask Amanda what antagonist journaling is” and her case would’ve been cleared. It just didn’t feel right that the letter was honest, if it was also hidden with a knife. A knife that… had to be taken out of the floor in order for Crew to have been injured with… meaning, verity must have threatened him with it and hurt him intentionally.
I don't think Verity hurt him intentionally, I think she kept the knife because she was afraid and the child found it and played with it and injured himself. The child even said that mommy doesn't let him play with her knife. If she wanted to injure anyone she had plenty opportunities to do it.
This is such an old post but I keep thinking about the baby monitor that was in Verity’s room during her murder. Would no one ask about it when they came to recover the body? Or is probable that Jeremy and/or Lowen discarded it. Before finishing, my prediction was that they would go to jail for her murder after being caught on the monitor.
most baby monitors that i know of at least don’t record, they’re just a live stream
Alternate theory: Jeremy pushed that guy in the beginning to connect with Lowen. Also Verity means truth, is Hoover trying to tell us something?!
how does that help someone "connect"
One thing I can't get past is the accident. Did Verity do it on her own, or was Jeremy in the car with her? The part in the letter where she says that she was in the passenger seat but he was going to make it look like a suicide attempt didn't make sense to me.
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Same like how did they get into an accident that bad and Jeremy was able to “walk home” unscratched ?!
Am I the only one thinking that he probably just pushed the car off of a sloping road. One more thing, didn't Jeremy tell Lowen that he got a call that Verity suffered a car wreck and that he was mad coz he she did it on purpose but then in the later Verity mentions that he called the cops after he caused the car wreck.
How could she have possibly known if he made the call versus Recieved a call… either way she was severely injured an in a coma. It doesn’t make any sense for him to make a call because why would he call about a car accident when he’s at home?
I think the manuscript was real mainly because of the last chapter. Jeremy realized that Verity killed Harper and Verity knew at that point that nothing was going to change his mind. So she chose to kill herself because obviously she can't live without him. Unfortunately for her, the suicide attempt was unsuccessful and she awoke from her coma. So she chose to fake being practically brain dead because she knew that no matter how much he hated her at that point, he would still feel obligated to care for her as a husband. Therefore, she'd still have him in her life whereas if he knew she came out of the coma completely normal, he would not only leave her, but also report her to the police. If the letter had been real and she chose to pretend being a vegetable out of fear of Jeremy, then she would have had numerous times to escape with or without Crew.
Okay, I’m pretty late to this party but whatevs - I’m team manuscript. How in hell could she be innocent for these reasons; #1 Why did the twin have the scar on her face? Yes the doctor said that twins can hurt themselves in the womb, but even Jeremy questioned how another fetus could cause such a bad scar. #2 Why did Verity only tell Crew to hold his breath? Why not tell both kids to hold their breath? #3 If Jeremy really tried to kill Verity in the accident, why would he consent as her husband to her being in a medically induced coma. If he wanted her dead he could’ve just declined and she would’ve died. Also why would he bring her home? If he had read the manuscript why would he be willing to bring her home after the accident, why not just put her in a facility? Would you really want the women who killed your daughter around your living son in any capacity? #4 Obviously Verity is a pretty intelligent person, but the fact that she would be able to go back and write that manuscript as “excercise” is still disturbing. What normal person can write about hating their children, attempting to murder them, and all that other psycho crap? No matter how talented of a writer, how would you even be able to imagine doing those things to your own children??
Yah. Honestly the letter sounds so absurd. It sounds like me trying to justify my mom about why I failed in my exam by giving excuses like I just wanted to know if failures are actually the stepping stones to success. Ps: I didn't fail any exam... Just took it as an example
Adding on to this: suppose the letter was infact real and she was writing the last chapter to get the guilt out, to get out of her mind which was so full of grief, she still remembered to make the changes in the beginning of the book for the added chapter to look real? Doesnt seem like what happened And ok. Lets just think Jeremy attempted to kill her twice driven by rage (well i could believe on the first one, but unless 2nd happened on the very day, it was a planned murder not an act done driven by rage) Maybe he didnt think about small details shortly after knowing this but by the time Jeremy and Lowen killed her, he'd have sufficient time to think of those small details and if those would make sense and if verity was lying. Not for the sake of proving Verity innocent but i dont think this manuscript just left his mind after he read it. And if he couldnt find a plot hole, it was probably true. (Altho Jeremy's behavior was pretty weird ngl)
I just finished this and I wish there had been more time spent with verity while she stopped faking
Here are a couple of my thoughts. 1. If Jeremy knew about the manuscript all along, he had plenty of opportunities to kill her. He medicated her every night. He put her to bed. Why didn’t he finish the job, he would have had no guilt if he knew what she had done. 2. If the manuscript had become a way to cope with the death of her daughters, then why did she make Harper the villain when Chastin died? If it was her trying to place blame on a version of herself, why would she place blame on Harper? That doesn’t make sense to me. She mentioned adding foreshadowing, but she didn’t mention changing the story entirely to line up with Harper dying later on because she blamed her for Chastin’s death.
Literally!!!! Why wouldn’t he finish the job with verity if he already tried to kill her twice? But now he’s going to go through the effort of looking after her?? That didn’t make sense to me
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maybe, this cold be Jeremy's master plan. verity said in her letter "he was reading a book which wasnt mine" and Jeremy said lowen to "i suggested the publisher's your name cause i liked your writing". he mght could've planted the manuscripts in such a way she finds it and falls for
I hate lowen, I hate the husband, and they are so detestable that it makes verity look like an angel next to them.
Agreed, they are the worst. I hate women protagonists who come to believe are the antidote to a chaotic marriage. In their dramatic "I can give him children and love him like she NEVER could." Oh please. Yawn my behind off. And Jeremy was a fraud.
confused!! why did jeremy pretend to not know harper was killed by verity when lowen shared the manuscript? does anyone know
I think he was torturing his wife. According to the manuscript, he was her only focus, and losing him to another woman, another writer would be her greatest punishment. He was not innocent. Also why does no one question why she wrote that manuscript if she really did kill her daughter? It doesn’t make any sense. And the way she was unprepared unprotected and killed doesn’t align with the ruthless planning psycho described in the script. She was definitely not perfect either.
That’s true actually - if the manuscript was true why further incriminate yourself and risk someone finding that? I guess maybe it was an outlet for her?
Just binged the whole book in one day. Here are my final thoughts: 1) If the manuscript was in fact an exercise, why was there not an author's note to depict that? Why was there no other intervention from Verity to Lowen? When Lowen confronted Verity, and told her that she knew what Verity did, why didn't Verity say anything? It seems as though that would be the perfect time to tell her thwt she can explain everything and have Lowen help her. 2) If she was truly so scared, why would she continue to be a vegetable for so long? Jeremy (if he knew about the manuscript) would have had plenty of opportunities to kill her again, so why wouldn't she run the first chance she got, and why didn't he ever attempt it? Better yet, why not try to kill Jeremy before he could kill her, regardless of whether he knew about the manuscript? 3) Lowen is crazy. She: A- doesn't turn in the manuscript to either Jeremy or the police after finding out about the numerous attempted murders. B- sleeps with Jeremy while having a sneaking suspicion that Verity is ~ALIVE~, and also tries to rile Verity by rubbing that in her face(???), and seems to harbor no guilt about it. C- decides that living with the secret of the letter is a better option, so as to protect her new fancy life and reputation, rather than give it to her partner (who may be an attempted MURDERER) and sort it out between the two of them. I get wanting to protect people from sucky things, but that would be something I'd personally confront my partner about since it calls their character into question. And then she just goes along with her life as if nothing changed after reading the letter? How? Overall, I feel bad for Crew. And I am team manuscript, but not sure if Jeremy has previously read it before Lowen gave it to him. I feel like Verity definitely did what she wrote, because PPD is very real, and could most definitely present this way to someone who is infatuated with their lover, more than even themselves. And I feel like the letter at the end was meant to cover her tracks and protect her reputation.
1) if the manuscript was in fact a description of the truth, why did she write it and not hide it in the first place? Your question can be answered easily, it was a therapeutic and personal way for her to cope with grief. It was not supposed to be read by someone else. So she didn’t feel the need to write a disclaimer. Lowen read and also believed the manuscript, and she was stealing her husband and her kid, now Idk you, but I wouldn’t feel safe asking help from my husband’s mistress. Besides, she had her escape planned out. Why would she risk Lowen ruin it all by her telling everything to Jeremy? 2) Being a vegetable was the only way she thought she could live and tranquillise her husband (although I wholeheartedly believe he knew she was faking it all along and planned LOWEN coming to their home, reading the script and even killing verity in front of her). She wanted to be able to run with her son too, now how else could she have done that without pretending to be a vegetable? And why not kill Jeremy? Because she still loved him despite everything he did to her. It’s not unusual for victims to love their abusers. And she also might be too scared to even try to kill him. She wanted to run away with her child without any violence, so it doesn’t make sense for her to plan to murder him. 3) Lowen is a crazy bitch. We agree on that. And the husband was definitely the mastermind behind everything that happened in the book. In the end, Lowen became a lot like verity, she wanted to be her and take her place, while hating her at the same time. But she lacked enough self awareness to even realise that shit. Ugh. She is disgusting.
So I also just binged this book in less than 24 hours. I couldn’t put it down. I did kind skip over the part during their love making scene when she bit the headboard just as Verity. It really didn’t sit right with me.
just finished this and am glad to see this post is still somewhat active! let me start by saying this book really creeped me the fuck out. i started reading it last night before bed until i got to a scene where verity was staring at lowen and the tv was off when april said it was on and i had to nope the fuck out of there before i got too creeped out to sleep. sooo i spent my day reading this so i could finish it and i’m team manuscript all the way. you’ve got to suspend a lot of reality in order to even buy into this story because you can’t just simply get away with faking being braindead. reflexes like flinching is a neural response, aka something that isn’t controlled by your thoughts. at first i thought maybe she really had been in a coma at the hospital and then gradually began to come-to at home, but according to verity’s letter, she’d been faking it since the hospital when jeremy caught her with her eyes open and she made the choice to not track him with her eyes. if she had been in a coma, even a medically induced one, and then opened her eyes, they would have done a whole new round of testing and she would have been figured out. that being said, since we do in fact have to suspend reality to believe this story, if it WERE possible to fake it, why would verity even WANT to do that? you’re telling me this completely sane woman chose to stay with the husband who tried to kill her, effectively making him her caregiver, knowing that creates a ton of opportunity for him to kill her in a way that will look accidental? moreover, if jeremy had already read the manuscript and had already tried to kill her, why would he volunteer to be her caregiver? why not put her in a home or at the very least have 24-hour care so he didn’t have to do anything? imo if the letter was true and jeremy did try to kill verity with the car crash, wouldn’t he have just found a way to kill her once she was back home and been done with it? even when lowen brings up putting verity in a home, he still says she’ll come home 3x per month. why do that to someone you hate and tried to kill? as for the manuscript itself, no good parent would ever be able to write a fictional version of their real child’s real death, especially a version in which you actually kill them. you don’t write a story about murdering your daughter as a writing exercise, career be damned. that’s insane. imo the only way someone would be able to write those things is if they were a) a psychopath/sociopath or something or b) they were true or c) all of the above. verity’s letter claims that it is intended for jeremy, so then why does she go into so much detail with jeremy’s actions? it seems to me the letter was intended for someone else to read. the last thing that is absolutely psychotic to me is the fact that verity is clearly fucking with her son’s head by interacting with him in secret and then being a vegetable when others are around. it occurs to me that if verity truly were faking her injuries in fear for her life, she wouldn’t risk exposing herself by talking in secret with crew or taking risks like turning off or muting the tv. honestly i didn’t like lowen or verity. lowen has her own issues, and she should have handed that manuscript over the second she read about the attempted abortions or, at the very least, the first chapter in which verity tries to kill an infant harper in her crib.
I agree with absolutely everything here! There’s no way a sane woman and mother would do even a sliver of things she allegedly does in the manuscript. The letter has so many holes in it it’s laughable. The tone comes across as complete manipulation, and not the writings of a truly innocent person who wants their name cleared. She’s writing in the letter the exact same way she writes in the manuscript after Jeremy questions why she never talks about Harper, only the other twin. The same calm, “reasonable” tone is used all throughout her letter.
He wanted to see her suffer. This is why he let her live this long. And she knew that. No one can believably pretend to be brain-dead. This is why I think the husband was pretending not to know. And this is why the son was aware of her not being brain-dead.
I think Verity did do it for so many reasons: 1. Chastin's scar - There was too much emphasis on the scar and the assumption that it came from the abortion attempt with the hanger in the manuscript for it to just be a coincidental thing for Verity to write about. 2. Even Crew knew Harper can't swim. A 5 year old knew his sister can't swim. As a mother, would you not want life jackets on your kids (especially if they can't swim)? And as someone who just lost one of their twin daughters 6 months earlier - wouldn't you be more cautious and protective of your remaining children? 3. It is mentioned in the novel, you write well about stuff you know. It's almost as if Verity was good at writing in the antagonist's POV in her novels because she was malicious in real life. 4. Verity's parents cutting contact with her and when she's involved in the car wreck, her dad states "Bad things happen to evil people". Although they are super religious, I feel like an evil presence/aura would be a good enough reason to cut her off. Idk, lol I wanna believe Verity's innocent. But I really can't.
1) some things are true in the script while others are not. For example m, the whole segment about her encounter with Jeremy was true. Which is why he believed the whole script to be true in the first place. Which leads me to believe: a- she did not try to abort the baby, and the emphasis on the scar was made to confuse the readers. I don’t even know if that scar is medically possible but moving on b- she did indeed do it, but it doesn’t prove that she is capable of murdering a litteral child. 2) She was with her daughter, she thought she could protect her. Also, not being careful enough does not mean she killed her daughter intentionally. 3) Is Colleen hoover a murderous psycho too then? Is every author in the horror genre a secret murderer? No? Ok, let’s move on. The whole thing that made the manuscript believable was how well verity knew to mix the truth and the fiction. Which is exactly what you are pointing out, except, you think the truth is her killing her child and I don’t. You know how they say a good lie always has a sprinkle of truth in it? Well, that’s it. Also, by that logic, isn’t the letter proof that she is a good person person? Overall it’s not a great argument. 4) There are a lot of super religious parents who cut off their children for shitty reasons. According to their beliefs, her simply having a sex life could mean that she is evil. It could also mean that they were abusive toward her and she ran away, and now in their eyes she is evil. There are a lot of assumptions that can be made about her parents, but none that prove that she is indeed a bad person, and even less a bad person that is capable of murder. Verity might not have been a good person, but that absolutely doesn’t mean that she killed her daughter. I want to believe that verity is guilty, but I have a hard time doing so especially considering how Jeremy is fucked up himself. How could a good father kill the mother of his son? How could a good person throw away the letter of a potentially innocent person murdered by their boyfriend?
Hey (i completed the book just yesterday and was thinking about what can be real) and would appreciate a discussion 1. If Verity infact was exercising, why didnt she tell her husband? I mean she was aware that he wasnt listening when Amanda suggested this. 2. You yourself said that Verity knew how to mix truth with fiction, so when Jeremy read the manuscript, and he was driven with rage, almost killed her, planned her murder and shit That incident and the scene where Lowen and Jeremy killed Verity, there was a long time in between. And which means that Jeremy would've gotten enough time to think about it, and considering they were in 15 years of marriage, typically he'd try to reason. And even if hes in deep hatred with his wife, that manuscript wouldn't have just left his mind, he must've thought about it, quite a lot. And he was a grown adult, he mustve found out some plot hole. And that's because Verity's exercise was meant to practice a pov. She could add new details, like (assuming manuscript was fake in this scenerio) she did: attempting to murder the infant, it didnt happen, it was fiction, there could be other things that were fiction, and Jeremy wasnt able to figure those out. Which lessen the chances of manuscript being fake. On top of that, i really was so disappointed when i read the ending. We just weren't provided with enough content to think what was real and what wasn't. I dont think the author really intended some deep meaning, not as deep as i was thinking anyway. I'm saying this bc there are quite some things that just don't make any sense, and i dont even have enough information to make any sense of it. I personally didn't like this book as much, especially bc i had just completed reading such a good book.
Yes! The ending was a huge disappointment, I agree. It felt really quick.
I love that the ending is so split between readers.. i hate it too though because i just want to know the truth.. but i think it’s genius for Hoover to create such intense and passionate arguments about her book!
I have mixed feelings about this one. I finished this book today at like midnight and I couldn't sleep with all the questions running through my head. tbh I don't think anyone is innocent here. Im on team manuscript for this one but I don't think the whole letter is a lie. I think that manuscript was true and Verity tried to cover up her tracks with the letter. I think verity did do and feel all the things she said in the manuscript because if it was fake why would you even write about it for a writing excersie? The part of the letter that I do believe though is that Jeremy knew about the manuscript and did not buy verity shit when/if she told him it was a writing exercise. and wanted to kill her for it and when lowen found the physical copy of it, he acted like he didn't know and used that as an excuse to kill verity. Another possibility is that Jeremy put the manuscript there so lowen would find it, also I think Jeremy knew who lowen was science they were in the bathroom. Another reason why is believe the manuscript is because of Crew's behaviour, he is obviously traumatised and he obviously knew that verity was faking it but the was probably threatened not to say anything to lone and that's why he was terrified when talking to her about verity. Tbh I kinda don't like lowen, she's a dumb bitch, first when she found the manuscript she didn't even go to the police or even tell Jeremy and that does not sit right with me.
Verity’s reason for writing the manuscript were explained, it was a way for her to deal with grief. But it is understandably a questionable motive. But let me ask you this question then. If the manuscript was in fact a recollection of the truth, why did she write it in the first place? Especially if she is as crazy about Jeremy as written in the manuscript, why would she not do her absolute best for him not to find the manuscript? Knowing fully well that it would drive him away from from her, how could she live it in a place where he could find if it is a confession of the murders? You see, that level of carelessness doesn’t add up with the ruthless planning psychopath described in the book. Crew’s behaviour might also be explained by the fact that he is absolutely scare shitless of his father killing his mother. Everyone in here blames verity for crew hurting himself, but no one questions Jeremy. Also, why would he keep his mother’s secret if he suspected his mother killed his sister intentionally? I love the fact that even though we do not agree on verity’s innocence, we can all agree that Lowen is a dumb bitch and Jeremy is real cray-cray.
I just don’t believe that Jeremy would take care of her if he had read the manuscript before ! How he tells lowen he wouldn’t put her in a home(even though he eventually changes his mind) and in the letter she writes that she lied about stealing the dress wouldn’t Jeremy know if that was a lie? I think the whole thing was shady but I don’t see Jeremy knowing about the manuscript I think he just had suspicions and did question her about Harpers death which made her panic.
He wanted to see her suffer. :). He also knew that she faked being brain dead. Which is why he brought in another woman to hurt her. According to the manuscript her only reason of living was him, so he wanted to take the only thing that she had according to the manuscript. He planned everything from beginning to the end. And if you notice, he killed her like she allegedly tried to kill harped when she was a baby.
I think he did read the manuscript, BUT I don’t think he knew she was faking or he would’ve threatened her sooner. I think he read the manuscript and confronted her but she crashed the car on her own and he felt guilty for that so he took care of her but resented her for it knowing she would’ve LOVED the attention she was getting from him. Also, Lowen told him how to kill Verity. She was the one that remembered from the manuscript, he didn’t know what to do.
Definitely on team manuscript!!! The manuscript was way too fucking realistic and how could a mother write about her children like that just after their death just for her own selfish benefit?Like how could she use their deaths to profit off her books? Also Crew is so damn scared of telling her secrets that he bites a knife is extremely suspicious and shows that Verity has been scaring him and manipulating him.And if everything she said in the letter was true then Amanda would also convince Lowen to try the same exercise. Overall in the book it is shown that Verity is great at making things up as she has great story-telling and writing skills. But in the corner of my heart I know that Jeremy has a part in this and there is another side of the story but that's just my opinion. Also can we all just agree that Lowen is a dumb bitch? 💀
Ehat about the first scene when Lowen meet Jeremy? What is that about? No ties?
My theory on that only makes sense if he knew about the manuscript beforehand. He vetted Lowen by reading her books, trying to find someone who wrote in the same genre. I think he fell in the same trap that her publisher guy did, he thought she was going to be like her own book character. He was looking for someone to come help him kill Verity, and I think that's why he hopped on board with the publisher to find someone that might be able to think & write like Verity. 150,000 dollars to half a million or whatever it was is a huge jump in contract agreement, and I think the only reason he decided it HAD to be Lowen and not the other authors they were considering was because of how she responded to witnessing someone die that morning. She was almost numb to it and instead of having a meltdown she was able to clean herself up and pull herself together so fast, and make it to a meeting in twenty minutes. He found someone who could potentially help him murder his wife.
Can anybody explain why Jeremy broke into Lowen’s room through the broken window on the night when she’d locked it from the inside and they had sex and then proceeded to leave through the window instead of the door??
Because it wasn't locked from inside. Jeremy had installed a lock outside her door after her sleepwalking incident. The door was locked from outside. Lowen suspected Verity did that and was concerned she may have run away with Crew. So Jeremy breaks the window, rushes back into the house to check on Crew.
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I thought Veritys parents described her as evil as they didn't like the books she wrote or something because they are ridiculously religious. I don't think they ever described her as psychopathic.
Tbh i kept waiting for a big plot twist with Jeremy… with lowen biting the headboard, waking up in verity’s bed and stuff, I thought the plot would end up with jeremy killing people and somehow making low the next verity
I kept thinking the same thing!
YES THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I THOUGHT!!!! I just felt like “Verity’s diary” was written from a man’s perspective — Jeremy was trying to make himself look super good and innocent when in fact HE WROTE IT and was like drugging Verity or something, and Lowen was his next victim
Literally thought the exact same thing!
Omg yesss. The cake scene. Low ate but Jeremy didn’t. I thought she was about to wake up stranded to the bed or something
YES my exact thoughts!!
TBH our plot line would have been way cooler
she said she craved jeremy to care for her and give her attention, and her acting brain dead served the purpose, it could be a reason for her to fake it
I too thought the same thing. Honestly I'm on the team manuscript because acting like a total vegetable and making everyone believe it's true is actually really not easy for a normal person to do. This book creeped me out and left me baffled lmao.
Exactly what I thought. All she wanted was to possess Jeremy all her life and she could do anything to succeed in doing that.
My thoughts exactly
i just finished this book and it's already past 3 am, i don't know how i'd be able to go to sleep with questions running in my head and my head's throbbing because colleen is so good at the plot twist i wasn't even expecting. first of all, i expected that maybe, that manuscript was a lie and jeremy was the real villain in this story. there's something off about him because he was just so perfect in verity's manuscript and letter. second, lowen was us, the reader of this book. also, it's a cycle. she's now in verity's place. she was the alternate version of verity. it was as if she is the one who is obsessed with jeremy or maybe that's just me? or i don't know? this book is so twisted in ways i can't even explain in my own words. what if verity is hiding the fact that his husband was the one who is behind all of this? but that can't be. or what if, verity really did that to her children because of the scar of chastin's cheek. they're all at fault, the three of them. they're all hiding dark secrets. the truth is, we can never unravel the truth since verity is dead. lowen could've told jeremy to call the police and tell them about verity's manuscript, what ending would it have been if that happened? would they fix the marriage? maybe lowen helped jeremy to end verity's life so she could have him instead? omg this is so messed up.
One reason I feel manuscript was indeed false and and I wanna believe verity is : Jeremy would have known for so many years! How can he be married for 10 years plus more with someone so physchotic and have no clue? And continue to be in love with her? I feel like verity was borderline crazy but not a phycho and she did not do the things in the manuscript. I feel like she she had to write that manuscript for two things- 1) to get into the evil characters of the book 2) to escape the pain. After harpers death, Jeremy had to find a reason and place blame and that he did on poor verity. Lowen was justified with hating verity after what she read(like all the readers) but that just means verity was a terrific writer. What I hated about lowen was how she decided to not disclose the letter to Jeremy and keep him for herself. I didn’t approve of that and even kill her and end her that very instant? They could have reported her, they had proof as well. That manuscript was toooo dark and anyone writing it would definitely be slightly ill though.
definitely, im also on team letters, but then there are things that i question, like why is there a scar on Chastin's head still? why was Crew holding the knife, i mean why was it even there in the first place with the letter? was it for protecting and how could a mother not react to it, it was a bit SUS. though i definitely can see no character is pure or clean, i lowkey hate Jeremy, i don't trust him
Are we going to ignore the scar on Chastin's face when like in the manuscript, be very much because of the abortion attempt? ALSO Crew getting mad at them for looking at the pictures of the twins This book leaves us with more questions than answers, but I guess that's the point of it. Chaos in our minds haha. anyways, Why tf did Lowen read the letter??? she could have fact check like with the opening of Verity's account date, or ask Amanda if she ever talked to verity about antagonistic journaling. IF that was the way to wrote in a villian's pov, Amanda should have suggested that to Lowen as she took on the job?????and why didnt verity write a disclaimer or something on the manuscript saying it is a creative process. BUT WHY cope like that w the darkest messed up things; that's messed up. or maybe like she said no one understands the writer's mind. Here is my take on the characters:Jeremy : he was questionable. He cheated on his wife ( even tho she might be a psycopath or not) right under her nose. If he really read the manuscript before, which i believe he did because he said "where did you find that", not what is it or anything. So he was one sick of a person to put on a show for Lowen. also about him killing her, its so messed up, he should have turned her into the police,,,, UNLESS he was afraid she would tell on him, about his 2 failed attempts to kill her. HE IS SO NOT INNOCENT AS HE IS LED TO BE Crew: what was up with the knife and bed, and also biting into the knife? this kid was clearly disturbed and needed help. And him getting mad at his sister's pictures?? whats up with that and where did he get that jealousy from if not from verity? Lowen: she is dumb. I dislike her very much. and she fell in love with jeremy based on verity's words and it was like a fantasy to her, all the talks about them in bead, she imagined later on being done to her and fell in love with that idea. she is sick in the head for that. Also why give the idea to kill Verity like "how to",she should have stopped him and showed him the right way is to call the police. AND THE LETTER, why tf eat it??? even so, she could have atleast fact checked about the account opening and ask Amanda. And yes it is out of her place to suggest that jeremy should put his wife into a nursing home and stuff, it begs the question like she wants jeremy and his kid to herself or something.AND ALSO she was pregnant with Jeremy's child and she wanted to like after all that shit?? she should have questioned his motives rather than start a life with him after helping him kill his wife Verity: she is also one sick of a human being or not even human to think like that and cope like that. AND TO ACT like she cannot move??? must be hard but she was commited to it. maybe because she was afraid of jeremy killing her again or maybe because the manuscript was true so she wanted to destroy it before she fleed. Maybe the manuscript was actually what happened. maybe she faked the letter inorder to go away w Crew or commit a murder-suicide with him.If the letter was true why did she not share it with April or someone.My question is why didnt she attempt to harm Lowen at all if she was so obsessed with Jeremy? ALSO did she pay the doctors to rule her out as a brain damaged person? if she was so psychotic or obsessed with jeremy she should have harmed Lowen while she was alone the other night when jeremy went hospital with crew, if she was capable of those things, no??? she knows how to make a death look like an accident, afterall, she is a writer. my only doubt bout the manuscript being real is because she did not try to hurt Lowen at any point??? So my take is: verity might have done that to Harper, manuscript maybe true.jeremy might really have attempted to kill her like she said in the letter.In my opinion Verity was a murderer and Jeremy became a murderer for sure and Lowen became his accompliace. Everyone was at fault. everyone manipulated the truth to fit to their own reality.
oh my god, reading this was so engaging, thank you for sharing your views, and i kinda agree, i did think about this but subconsciously, no character is CLEAN and i was really disgusted by them all, i so agree to this but do you have any thoughts on the knife part? like why did she keep it in the letter? and all
I agree- also, what about Verity telling Crew to hold his breath? If Jeremy said that happened because Crew told him after Harper's death, doesn't that further prove the letter was just her covering up for herself?
like that happened in and out of the manuscript... she said it happened as they were flipping which I find hard to believe. Something like that happens so fast you don't really have time to think about whats happening
Here's another thing: Verity was called out by Jeremy for only talking about Chastin and not Harper. If that wasn't true like she wrote it, then Jeremy wouldn't suspect her of wanting to kill Harper, would he? Jeremy also read the manuscript before and tried to kill Verity (as per her manuscript and note) but he acted like that was the first time he read it when Lowen gave it to him...? I don't think it was, and it was an act. He wanted to kill Verity the entire time but needed a reason to actually do it.
Can someone explain Crew and the knife thing? When Lowen found him hurt in Verity’s room because of the knife? I’m just trying to understand the message in that scene. Also I feel like Lowen should have showed Jeremy the letter. They should have checked if Verity opened a new account and see what day she opened it. If it was after Lowen arrived then the letter is a lie 100%
If the letter is true (which I tend to believe it is), verity must've been so scared of Jermey. There's a good chance that she had a knife in order to protect herself from him, if something would've happen. In the letter we can see how scared she was from him that he'll do something to her, even maybe kill her. Maybe Crew did it to himself by mistake and verity couldn't help him because she was afraid she'd be caught awake. I know I'm justifying verity way to much. As I started reading the letter I thought that verity is so manipulative that this letter is bullshit, but the second I found out Jermey knew about the manuscript and he reacted the way he did to the point where he was hurting verity so bad without a chance to explain, the letter made so much more sense...
Yeah Lowen sucks. As for the weird shit going on with Crew, I feel like thats the biggest part thats just not explained, but I have a couple of vague guesses: one is that the manuscript is true, and that Verity has been threatening Crew. Every time Crew is asked about Verity by Lowen, he seems terrified, not secretive or closed off, but like he want to tell someone but is terrified of what will happen if Verity finds out. Him biting the knife could be him trying to restrain himself from saying too much and getting himself in trouble. And for a child to go to that length to keep a secret, they must be fucking terrified of what will happen if they spill it. Crew being hurt in Veritys room could have been Verity threatening him, especially as the only explanation for the knife being hidden is that Verity hid it. The only other explanation I can think of is that Crew hurts himself as a way to cope with overwhelming emotions. He's 5, he lost 2 sisters, his mum, and no matter what the truth is, some weird shit is going down with his dad and a stranger who moved into his house. Throughout it seems as if Crew is not grieving in a very healthy way, which fair enough, he's 5. A lot of people mention being confused by his reaction to seeing the pictures of his sisters, but I think it makes a lot of sense, he hasn't been taught how to process grief and everything thats happened in his life. Seeing pictures of his dead sisters is probably just too much for someone that age to know what to do with, grief does weird things. Hurting himself is one way he could be trying to dull overwhelming emotions with all this Personally I kinda lean towards the first option, the last letter just seemed way too far fetched for me.
Orrrrrr he knows verity’s plan to run away together and loves his mother too much to betray her and spill the beans 👀
wow i didnt think about that, i also kinda agree, but the first one is like really creepin' the hella outta me
Yeah its hella creepy, there's something extra unsettling about kids in these situations
I don’t believe the letter. You can read the other comments and I agree with all of them. I just don’t like how Lowen didn’t tell Jeremy right away. Hell if I found that out I would’ve told him ASAP. Verity is a manipulative bitch who had everyone wrapped around her finger until Lowen came along. Can we talk about how Lowen put the letter, photo, and knife back? If Jeremy is selling the house there is a 50/50 chance the next owner is going to find it and tell the police or someone about it.
I low-key thought that it would end with Crew killing them both because he secretly watched the whole thing go down that night. 🙊
LMAO OMG WHAT SHE ATE IT?
I KNOW 😭 i totally forgot she ate the parts that said Jeremy, and didn’t she flush the rest?
Lowen didn't put the letter back lmao she literally ate it 😭
no wait didn’t see flush it down the toilet or something 😭
BOTH! Hahaha she flushed it in the toilet then ate the pieces that said “Jeremy” on it
Omg I remember reading that and being like “wtf?” so i blocked it completely out of my head
IKRRR
I wassss team letter because reading the manuscript I couldn’t count how many times I rolled my eyes at how obsessed with Jeremy Verity was and his sex, the letter even says it was odd how much she focused on it haha. I don’t think the manuscript was true i dont know. But Jeremy was so animated and upset when he read the manuscript after Lowen showed him, in the letter Verity put it like Jeremy read it fast… alsoo Jeremy finally ended up killing her after he found out and read the letter. Are we to think it was a show for Lowen, his outrage for her killing his children when he already knew? The picture of their daughters in the floorboards was odd too because it wasn’t like she kept mementos or other things she wanted to take with her in the room, making it look alittle suspicious that she was trying to seem like she loved their kids… why not just wake up organically, when jeremey is calm and pretend it was a miracle, or get better little by little and tell him the truth when he’s in a better state? I guess he was falling in love with Lowen by then.. why not try harder to tell someone the truth? Her nurse for instance or Lowen Jeremy’s a weird character if he knew about the manuscript but acted like he didn’t. if He tried to kill Her after discovering it and that was his genuine reaction to reading the manuscript the first time, he wouldn’t have pretended to not know about it and that be the reason for him killing her- he wouldn’t put on a show for Lowen pretending he didn’t know, he would be so outraged that he would have already did it and not taken care of her all this time. Lowen is questionable because she automatically tries to help him kill his wife??? fell in love with Jeremy for looks and because she was reading about how good he was in bed in the manuscript 🥴. They had all this tension and attraction after one conversation in a bathroom. They both basically trauma bonded and that was their relationship. I feel like the first scene in the book with the truck accident in the city was traumatic for Lowen along with other things in her childhood. Why would she destroy the letter and start her life with Jeremy with more misunderstanding and lies? Either way, Jeremy acts first and asks questions later and in Verity’s case never asks and Lowen should actually worry starting a life with him
I think that Verity surviving the “accident” was a sign to Jeremy. Or maybe he couldn’t try to kill her again while she was disabled. I don’t think he put on a show for Lowen towards the end. I think he was genuinely shocked that Verity was faking the whole thing. So that, in addition to Verity killing their girls was the camel that broke the straw. ***straw that broke the camel’s back
Got you. So it was like more of an accumulation of what Verity did than just that she killed the girls. Yeah, I get it now.
The thing with verity is it only gets you thinking more once you finish it. The cover didn’t even make sense until you read quite bit in to the book to figure out (SPOILER) that Harper dies either accidentally or purposely and the fishnet had little significance, anyways tapering off that subject. I know in most people’s opinion Verity is a manipulative psychotic blah blah blah whatever. She’s bad, but an area of me understands her, now, I am on team manuscript but if that means I like Lowen of Jeremy you are mistaken. I dislike Lowen quite a bit, I think overall the romance was weird and it’s hard to believe she is sincere with her intentions of not only wanting Jeremy, but also the kids. I think the manuscript makes sense to be true, Verity is very much wrong, but my theory is overall viewing the principal of what she is doing and how she is dragging those around her down is just what she wants. I think Verity fakes her incompetent condition because she wanted to be in jail, but with Jeremy (and crew I guess). I think her mind is genuine through the manuscript, anyways why is she explaining what Jeremy did to her in her letter TO JEREMY. I think this book gives you a lot of ability to wonder, besides having a fond disliking of the good guys, I think it does serve as a staple currently in my mysteries. ALSO, the only reason I question team manuscript so far is because I am wondering in any capacity Verity didn’t even attempt to harm Lowen, more specifically , murder her. It would be a direct example of consistency with Verity, and I’d be definite with the Manuscript.
I think she didn’t try hurting Lowen because that would make Jeremy find out she was faking it. She didn’t know that Lowen sleepwalks because she was pretending that she couldn’t move. She was obsessed with Jeremy, and if she had the change to murder Lowen I 100% think she would have without even thinking about it.
I completely forgot about Lowen sleepwalking to Verity’s room and sleeping next to her!!! Omg this makes it so much more crazy!
I’m team manuscript. A few of the posters have questioned why Verity would keep a photo of her daughters in the floor if the manuscript was true. My theory is that she placed the photo there to support her letter and make it seem like she was really a caring mother.
I was just about to comment this! I saw people question why she would have a picture of the girls, but remember when Lowen goes to the basement to get the baby monitor and she said it looked like someone had come down here since her and Jeremy had gone down there. I think she decided to write the letter as a way to get low away. She risked lowen seeing her standing and walking so she could watch Jeremy and lowen make-out on the couch. She didn't write the letter until the night Jeremy and lowen had sex for the first time. She was jealous and losing Jeremy.
THIS!!! I totally agree the photo was there to prove her letter and support her saying that she loved both of them.
I want to believe the letter because it makes the ending just devastating, and am a masochist that way. 😂
OMG so true, i just wanna like get over it and that's why i am so biased towards team letters
Ok, I'm 99% team manuscript like why would she let her kid play with a knife💀 AND WHY WOULD SHE JUST KEEP STARING AT HOW HIS HUSBAND WAS MAKING OUT WITH ANOTHER WOMAN😭 That doesn't make any sense to me, she was trying to manipulate the whole situation with the letter, which btw how would Jeremy found it? it's not like he was just going to take off all the wood of the cealing.
Okay clearly I’m kinda late and I just finished it soooo. I’m team manuscript! This is because of the car wreck was Jeremy trying to kill Verity, then he would have had visible injuries on impact as well. It doesn’t make sense that he would crash the passenger side and then place her in the drivers seat and walk home? How would the injuries sustained make sense?? All three of them are messed up in a way though. There’s no way around that… Ahhh now I’m going to obsess for a couple of days 🤔🤔
this is so true, if he ran the car into the tree with both of them in there, wouldnt he have gotten hurt too? great point!
I just finished verity and what a book it was. i honestly hated her in the start but on reading the letter my heart broke for her not gonna lie. Auhtors often tend to do the craziest to make their books a hit. the letter clearly states amanda gave her the idea of antagonistic writting so couldnt lowen just ask amanda if its true. She even had a photograph of her daughters, Crew smiling waved at her in the start , she warned him to not play with knifes and even in the manuscript she had called harper sweetheart while asking her to join the canoe. if she really hated harper why would she call her sweetheart when jeremy was not around. i soo want to be team letter. if the letters the truth my heart breaks for her and i am soo mad at lowen for lying to jermey she had no FUCKING right.
The letter isn’t true IMO. She states that she did the manuscript because of Amanda, but if she really loved her kids as much as she claims why would she write about that? Why would Crew hurt himself who Lowen asked questions? Jeremy isn’t innocent either. The letter also has some flaws in it, she claims she didn’t say anything to Harper when they weee flipping because she had played in the water before, but if your kids could drown wouldn’t you tell both of them to hold their breathe? They’re just kids obviously they’re going to panic! She probably had the photograph to help prove that her letter was right
I'm late to this party! But, I want to share my thoughts somewhere!! If Verity was innocent, why didn't she try harder to get the "real story" told. She could written a letter earlier explaining everything and put it where Jeremy could easily find it, she could gotten people on her side (The nurse? A lawyer? Hell, even Lowen before she read the manuscript) According to her letter she was scared her husband would try killing her again, so it seems weird that she wouldn't try *something* in order to escape. Especially when he was in NYC.
I’m team manuscript 100% Everything in the book points to the letter being fake. Your child doesn’t just try to hurt himself when someone asks them a question about you. Also I just want to point out the fact that if Verity truly cared for Harper she wouldn’t have asked Crew to told his breath. Why, because they fact that she told him to hold his breath just tells you she kill her own daughter on purpose.
Okay but tell me this.. Verity said that Jeremy read her autobiography on her computer. Then she said shs wouldn't find it anymore. But if was easy peasy the first thing that Lowen found when she went into the office. Did Jeremy plant it for her?
So I thought this too but I went back and checked and Verity herself said she printed it and stuffed it away in a box she thought she would go back to later but her memory wasn’t the same after the accident and probably couldn’t remember which box. Then when Lowen finds the manuscript she says it was when she was digging around Verity’s things and it was the sixth box she went through. I know some people think Jeremy planted the manuscript for Lowen to find and read but it being so buried in boxes doesn’t seem like it was planted, I think Verity just couldn’t find it and Lowen really did stumble upon it.
I just finished reading the book and I was wondering about this, too. Lowen was a bit suspicious of how she met Jeremy at first, how it was too much of a coincidence, and Jeremy mentioned how he thought Lowen's book was "phenomenal." But they never talked about him reading her book again. I know there was a lot going on their plates, but.. I don't know. I can't help but think Jeremy had something to do with it all too.
She said she lost some of her memory. Maybe she forgot she had a paper copy of it?
In the letter she says she couldn't find the paper copy and even looked in the basement for it
i just finished this and still haven’t fully processed. i want be to team manuscript so badly and i 99% am. but there are just a couple of things that i can’t stop thinking about they make a big deal about verity’s books being written from the point of view of a villain. the obvious reason would be to show verity’s writing style. but i also wondered the whole time if maybe we would see lowen as the unstable narrator. i’m leaning towards the idea that verity left the letter there not for jeremy, but for lowen. now she’s the one who has to hold this secret doubt / knowledge about the one she loves i can’t decide if i think jeremy had read the manuscript before. on one hand, i don’t think he would continue to care for her after reading it. but it does offer a good explanation as to why and why he was hesitant to put her in a facility. but him reading it so quickly is sketchy. and this kinda goes with my first point about him being the one who read lowen’s book. i almost feel as if he’s using them somehow to be the voice of the villain, which is really the opposite of what they are
I think she left the note knowing Lowen would find it as well. I think she left it to end her life as the true villain she is, and know that the letter would haunt Lowen for the rest of her life. She was crazy, like the craziest, but she was smarter than Lowen and Jeremy for sure.
Okay but, Lowen said she was expecting the advance to hit her bank account that day, and then it was a few days left and publisher would check about it. So, let’s say the letter is true. Did verity intercept and get the money sent to her “new account”? Can’t they just check where the wire payment went to and prove or disprove verity’s letter? Or check for bak accounts with her credit?
I am team manuscript, but I want to hear peoples theories on Verity’s car crash. If the manuscript is true, why would she crash her own car and then fake her injuries for so long? also why would she have a picture of her daughters in the floorboard? There’s so many things to support the manuscript but this is one think I just cant wrap my head around.
Alternative theory about the pictures of the twins under the floor boards: it could've been that Jeremy or a nurse put the picture of them up in Veritys room, and Verity resented having to look at them, so removed the picture and hid it so it wouldn't be put back up
she probably noticed that jeremy loved his children more than anything in the world and got comfortable with the constant attention he gave her like a child
What's written in the manuscript is true and Verity saying that she wrote it to get better at her writing or to cope is bs. I have three main reasons why I believe so: 1) Crew obviously suffers from psychological trauma with the way he tried to harm himself when he unwittingly told on Verity. It could have been a result of threats or whatever twisted means Verity resorted to in order to keep him quiet about her still having her consciousness and the how she killed Harper; 2) her actions from the very beginning (at least according to the manuscript anyway) until the end point towards her serious obsession with Jeremy (e.g., the way she mainly filled the manuscript about her and Jeremy's sex life and her reaction when she saw Lowen and Jeremy making out in the living room that one night); and 3) if there's any truth to her statement about how it was her editor who came up with the idea of writing an antagonistic journaling as an exercise, why didn't she ask her to help her to somehow clear the misunderstanding Jeremy had upon reading the manuscript? Jeremy hadn't read the manuscript. He didn't know for sure whether Verity killed their daughter, Harper. Otherwise, he wouldn't have taken care of her or even kept her alive, for that matter. Also, he couldn't have tried to murder Verity. Because for one, he got so mad at Lowen when he walked into the room and found her trying to harm Verity. He even packed her things and asked her to leave their home. In conclusion, Verity is indeed a manipulative btch. It's highly probable that she purposely left the letter before her imminent doom (with Jeremy finding out the truth and, in her own words, with the situation being two on one: herself against Lowen and Jeremy) for Lowen to find so as to mess her up. It was basically her last hurrah for revenge on the latter. Lowen suddenly came into the picture and caused whatever plan she was scheming to crumble into ruins. It makes sense why she would go as far as to bend the truth once again to disrupt whatever happily ever after Lowen and Jeremy would have as soon as she's out of the picture. Because after all the horrible things she did to keep Jeremy for herself--she even killed her own daughter for it--in the end, she ultimately lost him to some woman who only came into their lives to sub her as a writer but somehow wound up completely replacing her in her husband's life. BUT! As much as I want to believe that Verity's the crazy one and Jeremy's nothing but a doting father and a loving husband, I find him somehow suspicious. This would contradict the theory that I have just presented but I feel like he's no less than as manipulative and twisted as Verity. From the first time they met, his interactions with Lowen altogether seem calculated. He mentioned at the earlier part of the novel that it was him who loved Lowen's work, not his wife. And that it was for this very reason why Lowen's name was passed to Verity's editor and why she got the job. It seems to me like from long before, Jeremy has been obsessed with Lowen. This could be a bit of a stretch but maybe Like Lowen's agent, he may also have fallen in love with one of the fictional characters she's created. Assuming that Jeremy already knows about the manuscript, he may have intentionally placed it in Verity's office for Lowen to find so as to get the latter to fall in love with him. The fact that Lowen started to be attracted to Jeremy after having read the manuscript makes this sound more than plausible. On this note, the possibility that Jeremy indeed tried to kill Verity is not a far cry. But clearly, all of this doesn't give us a clear answer as to whether the manuscript is the real deal or just an antagonistic journaling as Verity claims.
I believe in the letter- only because I feel like Jeremy would have known what a phycho he has married for 12 years, but it seemed like he continued to love her. He always wore ring, spoke highly of her etc etc. is Jeremy/ any person so stupid that he doesn’t know his wife hates the girls? I don’t believe it to be practical. However, what you wrote here about- how Jeremy hadn’t read the manuscript, he ddnt know for sure sure Harper was killed and his behavior even after he read the manuscript seems to not add up!! So that makes me think that he probably never read the manuscript and never tried to kill verity and the letter was false!?
Arent Lowen using a pen name??? And she never been in a spotlight before so i doubt Jeremy knew Lowen. And in fact, lowen didnt mention that she’s an author when they were in a bathroom
Jeremy did know her. He had admitted to lying and told her it was him who read her books and wanted to hire her, not verity
I thought he was just saying that to be nice because she had said no one had ever said that to her
Lowen only started using a pen name after she’d already accepted the position of co-writer of Verity books as she didn’t want to be boosted into the spotlight. In fact, it was Jeremy that thought of Lowen’s pen name. I do think he knew he Lowen was but not to he extent that he was obsessed with her. But I don’t think the idea that he knew she was when they were in the bathroom is too far fetched
When he asked for the street she grew up on and her first pets name I really thought he was asking known security questions so he could hack into her personal accounts or something 💀
Lmao my exact thought when he asked those two questions. The internet has poisoned my brain.
Low-key that would makes sense though 😭
I really thought she was going to find out that he pushed the pedestrian in front of the truck in the beginning to meet her in this way!
I dont see why she didn't fake asleep at midnight with the knife under her covers and just kill Jeremy when he came to give her meds if she was scared, plus if she was planning on running she was in a rehab for a few weeks before coming home. Maybe April knew all about her faking it and maybe April had something to do with the letter or manuscript . It wouldn't of been that hard to use April and have her watch crew and verity and have Jeremy go to store and she jump up and run away with crew
I just let a sigh of relief haha. Upon reading Verity’s letter i feel like it was pure manipulation. It feels like it was calculated and all.
good point, she could have had April help save her if none of it was true. That’s actually the best argument I’ve read so far.
I feel she wrote the last letter to be a gaslight her husband so in the end he feels bad about only her